Roadside Research Guide: Turning Human Filth Into Alien Points

Running a rural gas station as an undercover extraterrestrial means you are going to be scrubbing up a hell of a lot of human filth.

I really didn't sign up for planetary invasion just to end up playing janitor, but here I am. In Roadside Research, keeping your storefront spotless is an absolute necessity. If your wooden floors are caked in mud, skid marks, and mysterious alien goop, your human customers get suspicious. Worse, they get pissed off and stop buying your overpriced soda. But there is a massive silver lining to all this manual labor. Every dropped can and candy wrapper is literal fuel for your research. I am going to walk you through exactly how to keep the health inspectors away and turn raw garbage into the alien tech upgrades you actually need.

The Janitorial Basics of Extraterrestrial Retail

Before you can start building a high tech surveillance state, you need to master the sponge. Humans are remarkably messy, and if you let their trash pile up, your customer satisfaction tanks right alongside your daily profits.

Spotting the Mess

You will not always get a giant neon sign telling you the place is a disaster zone. The most common offenders are skid marks tracking across the floorboards right by the entrance or near the cash register. If your bathroom starts looking like a crime scene, you will see an unmistakable green cloud hovering over the toilets. That same nasty green smog pops up over the gas pumps outside when they inevitably get grimy. If you are wandering around blind, pay close attention to your customers. When a human walks through filth, a massive dissatisfied icon pops up over their head. I use them as my personal dirt detectors.

The Sacred Sponge Boot

You are an alien, so naturally your cleaning supplies are completely weird. Wander into your bathroom and you will find a pair of old boots with sponges strapped to the bottom. Grab one of these monstrosities. To clean up skid marks, toilet clouds, or pump grime, just click and hold while dragging the boot over the stain. You need to scrub frantically in circles until you see bubbles pop up and hear a squeaking sound. Keep at it until the floor sparkles. I highly recommend leaving a spare boot right out by the gas pumps. Running inside every single time an SUV leaves a mud stain is a fucking pain in the ass.

Dealing with Extraterrestrial Gloop

Humans are not the only ones leaving a mess in this game. Every now and then, your alien body is going to leak a massive puddle of colored goop onto the floor. The puddle matches your character color, so your coworkers know exactly who dropped it. If a human steps in it, they slip, fall, and get extremely suspicious. Scrub it away with the boot exactly like you would a normal stain. Also, if you get hit by a speeding car or shot by an agent, your corpse leaves behind an absolute tsunami of goop. Clean it fast unless you enjoy dealing with the Men in Black.

Trash is Science: Farming Alien Points

Now for the profitable part of playing maid. The local population treats your property like a landfill, dropping empty cans and wrappers everywhere from the parking lot to the aisles. Your first instinct is probably to toss it all in the dumpster out back, but doing that is a massive mistake.

The Yellow Recycler

The big secret to the early game is the small yellow recycler sitting in your secret alien back room. Every single piece of human trash is a goldmine for research. When you find a wrapper wedged behind the water dispenser or dropped by the pumps, pick it up, haul it into the back, and throw it into the yellow machine. Hit the analyze button, and boom, you just earned an Alien Point. The regular outdoor dumpster literally just deletes the trash and gives you absolutely nothing. Stop using the dumpster for human litter and feed the machine instead.

Automating the Grind

Picking up trash piece by piece gets old fast. Save up 50 Alien Points immediately and unlock the Trash Bags. This lets you scoop up multiple pieces of garbage at once, cutting down your tedious trips to the back room.

The real game changer costs 300 Alien Points. Once you unlock the Trashcan, place a few of them around the store. Customers will magically stop throwing their crap on the floor and start using the bins. When a bin gets full, grab the full trash bag, waddle it into the back room, and feed the whole thing into the recycler. It is a steady, reliable loop of income that keeps your hands clean and your research funded. Just make sure you actually empty the bins. If they overflow, the humans go right back to throwing their garbage on your newly mopped floors.

Staying Under the Radar

Managing the filth is a delicate balancing act. You need to keep the store clean to make money, but you need the trash to farm points safely without blowing your cover.

The Golden Rule of Goop

Humans have terrible peripheral vision in this game. They will drop trash right next to you and barely blink. But if you try to clean up a massive alien goop spill while they are standing on it, or if you start scanning their garbage while an agent is browsing the chip aisle, your suspicion meter will skyrocket. Farm your points and scrub your floors, but do it when the coast is clear. Getting assassinated over a crumpled soda can is a terrible way to end a shift.