So why is TCG Card Shop Simulator different from the other mundane task sims clogging every digital storefront these days? Well, the simple act of being able to open packs of cards to try to essentially win the lottery by pulling rare cards is insanely satisfying and fun. One $2 pack of cards can turn into hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. It's awesome. It's genuinely thrilling. And from a game progression perspective, it's pretty vital to keeping your small crappy card shop alive for the first few hours since it costs tons of money to unlock more items to sell.
It isn't just the gambling RNG aspect of hoping to get rare cards that makes the game good, either. Building a store you actually would want to shop at is surprisingly fun as well. There are certainly ways to min/max your store to maximize how much money and XP you earn each day, but that isn't especially fun. Stocking just one item type and funneling these pigs in human clothing through as fast as possible to squeeze as much cash out of them as you can before kicking their smelly butts out into the street kinds sucks. It's just so ... gross. It's definitely a lot more effort to stock multiple tiers of card booster packs, table top games, play mats, comics, plushies, protective sleeves, card albums, and a bunch of other stuff but it's also way, way, way more fun. Building a shop you're actually proud of is really enjoyable.
I also have to say, just watching your customers is pretty fun as well. For example, the game has a mechanic where smelly TCG players stinking up your store is bad for business, so you can place automatic air fresheners all over the place to erase the fart clouds surrounding like 60% of the people that walk through your door. You can also sell cans of body spray and sometimes nerds will buy ten of them at a time. That's hilarious. And ridiculously sad. Dudes (and a lot of ladies), buying body spray at the local nerd hangout isn't a replacement for proper hygiene. Take a shower and use deodorant, dorks.
Customers buying multiples of anything is funny to me in general. People will come through and buy 30 packs of card sleeves or 5 copies of the same comic or 10 identical play mats. Just ... why? That's just how these games all work, though. Customers always just buy literally anything you put on the shelves with no rhyme or reason.
You can also buy and trade specific cards directly with customers, and these interactions are always a roller coaster. Mostly a lot of entitled morons expecting you to pay way too much, or trade them a card worth twice as much as the one they're offering. Or they'll wait for you for several in-game hours in the hopes you'll buy their card worth ten cents or less. Like, bruh. You should know better.
Just to briefly touch on the gameplay here - it's exactly like every other shop sim game. Clunky and awkward and not that great, honestly. The faster you earn enough money to hire workers to do the tedious jobs for you, the better the game gets. That way you can focus on opening more card packs and sending them in to be graded and stuff like that.
I have to say that the endgame is kind of a dystopian capitalist hellscape where you can just buy machines to automatically open card packs for you. I have a whole separate store just full of machines opening cards and workers filling them up constantly. I then sell the valuable cards and throw the rest in a big bin for customers to take for free. It's pretty dire, really. It doesn't feel good. But that's why I have my real store next door full of fun products, even if it doesn't make remotely as much money. Building the shop of my nerdy dreams counteracts the card opening sweatshop assembly line destroying my soul little by little next door.
I will also say that there are zero kids in this game. All of your customers are grown ass adults like this is some nightmare world where only adults have enough money to collect these cards meant for children ... oh wait, that's exactly what the TCG industry became in real life. Nevermind.
Anyway. I've honestly had a ton of fun with TCG Card Shop Simulator. I only really played it because it's on Xbox Game Pass, but it's genuinely really fun and satisfying and I wouldn't have regretted spending the $20 to buy it. It's a little grindy and can feel like tedious real ass work, but it can also be incredibly rewarding and exciting to not only pull a fat stack of rare cards, but also to build a store you're actually proud of. I wouldn't really recommend any of the other shop sims, but TCG Card Shop Simulator just has that special something that gets you hooked and makes it worthwhile.
Comments
Post a Comment