I was having trouble finding something to write about this week, so I finally bit the bullet and bought a game I had hesitations about, but thought I’d enjoy: TCG Card Shop Simulator. And I was right on the money!
And while I personally enjoy the game, it currently lacks depth in any of its systems. I don’t really want to recommend it in its current state.
Side note: In that sense, it reminds me of MMORPG Tycoon 2, a game I purchased 3 years ago, and is now on version 0.2. Early access is a grave of ideas.
But let’s say you do fork over $13. What do you get right now? A sort of abstract sim game with some card collection elements. Here was my experience.
Tales From The Gameplay Loop
After I named my store, I ordered inventory and waited for folks to wander in. When those customers finished their browsing, I went and checked them out. The checkout mini-game is a majority of the “gameplay” that I’ve seen so far. There is a small element where customers can show up smelly, and need to be sprayed with air freshener. I dealt with this by setting up two auto cleaners near the entrance to my store to double blast anyone who walked in, like it was a tower defense.
While the player can hire helpers NPC’s to run the checkout, the only one I could afford was so slow that I just did it myself. It felt more practical to have them stock shelves, where it didn’t matter that they moved like molasses.
The other parts of the loop involve buying new furniture and displays for the store, buying stock, adjusting prices, and selling singles. More about selling singles in a bit. First, let’s talk about the other parts.
My general take on this game is that it functions mechanically, but lacks real depth to any single system. Employees don’t get better or worse as they work for you. There are a few different types of furniture, but they all function the same, and there’s only one type of play table. NPC’s don’t have names or preferences, there are no regulars, grinders, or “That One Guy.” The player can adjust prices, but it doesn’t seem to influence market value.
In that sense, the game feels very static, almost like a clicker game. I would wait for things to happen, acquire money, buy a bigger store, buy more stuff to put in it. Rinse, repeat.
A sort of capitalist zen garden.
But I never felt like I was really working toward anything, or making more than incremental progress. That said, I do want to talk about one system the game has that did make me feel something.
Cracking Boosters, and Selling Singles
TCG Card Shop Simulator has a fairly reasonable system for opening booster packs to add cards to your own collection. It’s nicely animated, works reasonably well in partnership with the rest of the game, and is mildly compelling. But it’s not what I want to talk about.
No, what I want to talk about is how this game has finally made me understand why stores don’t like selling singles, mostly because the process is a huge annoyance for tiny amounts of profit. I never want to sell a single under $10 ever again.
And this is in a sanitized, digital version of the process! I don’t have to keep perfect inventory, or look up pricing, or worry heavily about shelf space. But every time some unblinking digital homunculus walks up to the register with a card that’s a $1.27, and a $5 bill, I want to leap across the counter and chase them from the store.
So in that sense, this game has made me feel a weird sort of sympathy for local game stores, and their equivalents. I now understand why no one wants to sell me 30 commons for $8.71.
Overall
Sure, TCG Card Shop Simulator is fun right now in a sort of zen/whiteout sense, but there’s no guarantee it will ever get all of the features it has promised, or even that I’ll remember the game exists by then. If you have $13, and need to just zone out from the world for a few hours, it’s great.
But it lacks any real depth to any system, or even the aesthetic customization that would set it apart as a fun toy for designing a dream card shop.
TCG Card Shop Simulator is $13 on Steam.
Post-Script
As far as I can tell, NPCs in TCG Card Shop Simulator don’t react to anything you do, including jumping on tables, throwing boxes around, and just generally nuisance in the store.
Somehow while playing, this manifested into me envisioning my player character as a sort of long limbed, pale cryptid that always wears a flat cap covering their face, speaking only in curses and praise, clambering over counters and leaping across tables as it restocked and moved to check people out.
It also made me realize that I would still probably shop and play at this store, even if the owner occasionally scuttled across the table in the middle of the match if the prices were good enough.
This was followed by me roleplaying as this character for 30 to 40 minutes, including nodding my head, and saying “Blessings upon you, yes, yes!” whenever someone paid with exact change.
This is not a thing I usually do in games. I don’t know where this came from. Also, at some point I decided they had a tail like a lizard.
Thanks for reading.