Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is kind of a depressing game - at least by its premise. It's set in a world of space-travel, dungeon-delving, treasure and magic, but where all of those things are eternally out of reach for you, costing more than you'd be able to make in several lifetimes

You play as the alien janitor of a spaceport, and the job is just as glamorous as you'd expect. The opening sees you resolving to explore the dungeons below the spaceport for treasure, so you can finally leave and start your new life as a space-faring adventurer. Unfortunately, you are almost immediately cursed with a floating (noisy) skull, and so your new goal is to get rid of that first. The spaceport itself is a crossroads for adventuring types - there are weapons and armor vendors, mages guilds, alchemists, and exotic food vendors - so someone here would know how to help, right? You just need to ask around..

But while you do that, you need to eat and sleep and generally take care of yourself, and that costs money. As a janitor, you get paid in municipal credits to incinerate trash around the space-port, and you could save money by buying the cheapest vending machine food, but that might make you sick, which could mean paying for medicine. And also you occasionally get itchy in your current gender, so you have to pay to get that shifted (four different choices). And sometimes the spaceport guards feel like you won't put up a fight if they just take some of your cash (you won't). All of these things paint a picture of someone living at the lower edges of society, just trying to make enough to survive one more day. This is the part that can feel quite grim

While tidying up the trash, sometimes you find something that looks like it could be sold for more that you'd get paid for incinerating it, but even though vendors are everywhere, they're only interested in certain items, and those interests change with the days, and you can only carry so much. It's tough, this game, and not in the classically "hard" game sense, more like the oppressing feeling weighing you down mentally that there must be a better way to be doing this, that if you could just make a really good sale, or save enough to have some security, things would be better

Sometimes things are better though; there are the good moments, where you catch a bit of a break, and it's genuinely relieving. Also, you get to know the area over time, so you develop a rhythm of when and where you can get a good deal. The curse you're under constantly drains your luck, so learning where the shrines are to pray at, becomes part of that daily routine as well. Keeping your luck up seems to have an effect on the items you find, and encounters you have, so it's generally a good idea. Also, the space-port is lively and colourful, and full of interesting people. At the end of each day, you're prompted to write what you did in your diary before going to bed. You have to write something, and of course you could just mash the keyboard, but why not take the time to reflect on your day? It's these moments of observation and reflection (and good fortune) that bring the bright feelings, in a largely dreary game

There's some side-quest-y type tasks you can do while you work towards breaking the curse, which are small but interesting, and most of them are rewarded with achievements. There's also however, a literal achievement peddler you can find around the red district. They'll sell some items that give specific achievements, but also sells an (expensive) item that will simply give a random achievement. The catch? Depending on your luck, there's a chance that you lose all of your achievements instead. You'll get a consolation achievement for this happening (which makes it required for 100%), and you can re-unlock everything you lost, but as a achievement hunter myself, i found this whole idea very amusing. Just an interesting side note

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor is not a game for everyone. It doesn't reward hard work the way games normally do, and at times it's genuinely hard to keep pushing through, but i stayed around for those moments of happiness at the small joys