Midnight Launch: running a games shop in 2003, including the returns with no receipt

There is a line in Midnight Launch's description that made me laugh out loud at my screen.

Among the things the game promises: order furniture, unlock licences, decorate with giant cardboard cutouts, and maybe even survive a return request without a receipt.

Entering early access on 22 October. No score today.

The setting

The chaos of the early 2000s retail scene.

You run your own video game store. You stock consoles, you work the register, you answer customers' questions, you customise your shop layout, and you deal with great customers and not so great customers.

In first or third person, solo or in co-op for up to four.

You order furniture, games, consoles and accessories. And above all, you set prices to maximise both profit and customer satisfaction, which is the only real tension in a retail game.

Why the setting is well chosen

Because the 2000s games shop is a vanished and deeply recognisable place.

It was somewhere you went without knowing what you wanted, where the clerk had an opinion about everything, where the wall of box art was most of the advertising you saw, and where the midnight launch was a social event.

All of that disappeared in twenty years, replaced by a wishlist on a platform. Making a game about that place is making a game about a job that barely exists any more.

And the title says it well: the midnight launch was the moment the shop became a gathering place.

What I am watching

The customers. That is the whole game. A retail simulator with no personality in its clientele becomes a cash register with scenery. The studio promises great and not so great customers, and that is precisely where writing is needed: the person who wants to return an opened game with no receipt, the child who is short, the insufferable collector.

Four-player co-op. In a space as small as a shop, four players can either divide the posts intelligently or trip over each other constantly. Both can be funny, but only the first holds over time.

And the licences. The game mentions unlocking licences, which is an interesting progression mechanic: your shop is allowed to sell some things and not others. Whether that produces genuine commercial decisions or a simple checklist remains to be seen.

What draws me, fundamentally, is the nostalgic angle without the nostalgia.

The game is not selling "things were better back then". It is selling a working day in a shop people physically walked into, where you had to talk to them, and where half the job was handling unreasonable requests with a smile.

In an era when we buy everything without meeting anybody, that is almost a historical game.

Ever worked in a games shop? Your impossible-return stories are worth gold on the InsertCoins Discord.