Legally distinct Pokémon and stinky customers: what keeps people coming back to the latest shop sim hit?

GamesSimLegally distinct Pokémon and stinky customers: what keeps people coming back to the latest shop sim hit?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: OPNeon)

A customer with a green cloud surrounding him walks into a shop.

But I used to work at a supermarket, so deleting the economic precarity from my years on Struggle Street rubs me the wrong way. I never worked at a game shop though, which is why I’m fine with turningthatinto a silly game. Watch your head, I need room to wave my double standard around in here.

TCG Card Shop Simulator is the shop sim players will inevitably bring up as the one that’s good actually, despite it following the Supermarket Simulator template so closely you can practically hear the Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V keys being hammered. Where it deviates is that the boxes arriving instantly on your shop’s doorstep aren’t full of bread and pasta, but booster packs for “Tetramon: Duel Master” you can crack open yourself.

If that’s not authentic enough for you,Nexus Modshas reskins that replace the Tetramon with actual Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, or Yu-Gi-Oh cards, among other options.

The Card’s Tale

(Image credit: OPNeon)

An open booster of trading cards with a total value of $12.94.

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While it was definitely true up until the 2010s at least that game shops, in the words of an ex-girlfriend I dragged into one, “reek of boy,” things are different now. I can’t remember the last time I went into a shop to look at the little plastic guys and encountered someone who smelled like cat piss. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.

(Image credit: OPNeon)

Spraying a smelly card game player with a spraycan of deodorizer.

The most significant difference between TCG Card Shop Simulator and an actual retail job is that nobody talks. People just hold out their cash—you can change which currency they use, so I defaulted to Australian dollars—in total silence, and it’s a much nicer world than the one where customers want to actually engage with you.

As much as anything I think that’s why the essentially mindless repetition of running a shop becomes fun in these games—freed of the social pressure of having to make small talk with people you may never see again it’s just a repetitive activity that makes a number go up. That’s videogames in their most basic form.

While I understand the appeal of TCG Card Shop Simulator, I can’t love it, and not just because of the superfluous “Card” in its name. It’s because I playedKardboard Kings: Card Shop Simulatorback in 2022, which had all the basics of TCG Card Shop Simulator including the satisfying act of opening booster packs. The difference is that Kardboard Kings had a story instead of just an ever-increasing profit margin, and had returning customers with names and personalities rather than Unity store assets holding out their fistfuls of dollarydoos. Because it had an engaging personality of its own and a story with an ending, however, it wasn’t ideal streamer bait, which TCG Card Shop Simulator absolutely is.

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The Card’s Tale#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

The Card’s Tale

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals