Vending Machine Co. is a fun and relaxing management sim. Buy vending machines, keep them stocked, and play a bunch of mini games. No missable achievements, 100% in around 12 hours or so.
Approximate time to 100%: My guess is around 12 hours.
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don't need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Gamepad or mouse and keyboard: I played with mouse and keyboard
In Vending Machine Co. you just started your own business of managing vending machines. So you rent your first machine and stock it with some items. Then you go to bed to collect your profits the next day. At first, you have to do a lot of manual work, like collecting the money, repairing the machine, and keeping it clean. Later on, those tasks can be automated, leaving you mostly to keep an eye on the stock in your machines.
There are 9 areas to unlock, each with 2 or 3 spots for a vending machine (except the last location, which has more spots). There are also a lot of product categories you can unlock in the store where you buy the items. There are so many upgrades available that there is always something to work toward or that you feel close to reaching, which keeps you going to the next step and the next step, and before you know it, you have so many vending machines!
Each location also has their own specialties. Like different customers who like different products, but also mini-games and stores you find on that location and can interact with. So opening up a new location is not just giving you new slots for vending machines, but also a new game mechanic. You can expand quickly and just rent machines, but keep an eye out when the rent of a machine ends. However, I took the more patient approach of buying machines, upgrading them, and after finishing a location, then going to a new location. Which is also totally fine and doesn't give you any penalties.
I struggled a bit to keep up with each machine's stock, so in the end I made every machine the purple one with 20 product spots, chose 2 product groups with 10 items each, and stocked the machines with just those. This felt a bit boring, but also more manageable than having a bunch of random items in each machine. However, I had 1 or 2 machines with random stuff because you will get those from sponsorships. This took away the opportunity for the "hot items" each week, but made managing the stock a lot easier, which I preferred.
Vending Machine Co. has a lot of achievements, but many of them are easy to unlock when you reach a new area or when you reach a new level on your socials. I would recommend first manually repairing and cleaning dirt/graffiti from your machines for the achievements before you buy upgrades that do it for you. None of the achievements are missable, so just enjoy running your Vending Machine business!
I give Vending Machine Co. 4 out of 5 stars.
4.0