There’s something to be said for venturing into uncharted territory when making games, but the results may not always be what you were hoping for. I think that’s the case for Rip Them Off, a strategic puzzle game of sorts with both a unique look and a pretty different hook. Your goal is to optimize stores of various types and sizes along routes your citizenry walk along in the hopes of maximizing profits, taking them for as much money and as efficiently as possible. In principle this isn’t such a bad idea, and certainly aesthetically it all has a certain flair as you progress to see the well-oiled machine of your capitalism take in customers and drain them of every penny like an assembly line. The problem, for me, just ended up being the often very trial and error method of understanding how best to extract those dollars, requiring an attempt, a failure, and then a restart to try a new combination. At times it can be intuitive but other times you’ll even have everything nailed in the first phase but then fall apart the next, making you wonder if your whole strategy needs rethinking. For strategy and optimization fans this could be a great match but for others the tedium may drag it down.