TCG Card Shop Simulator hits 1.0 with 96 per cent positive reviews, and its creator made it out of boredom

There is a line in the 1.0 release message that explains this game better than any analysis.

Its creator recounts that after burning out on solo mobile development in 2023, he was so bored he thought: let us see whether I can publish a PC game on Steam, and it would be nice to be able to open booster packs infinitely.

Two years later: 45,580 positive reviews out of 47,257. That is 96 per cent.

Why it works this well

The answer comes down to one mechanic, and it is almost embarrassingly honest: you can open the booster packs yourself.

You order products for your shop, you put them on the shelves, you sell them. But nothing stops you keeping an entire display box and tearing it open in the back room, hoping for the rare card.

So the game puts the player exactly where a card shop owner's real dilemma sits: every pack opened is a lost sale and a chance to find something worth ten times more. You are not simulating a business, you are simulating a temptation.

And the temptation is reinforced by collecting: you can sell your rare cards to make a fortune, or keep them to complete your album. Two incompatible objectives, permanently, in the same save.

The management side, more serious than it looks

Around that idea there is a genuine shop to run.

You design your store, you arrange the shelves and displays so the customer journey flows. You order different packs and merchandise, and above all you track trends: demand shifts, and badly chosen stock sits on the shelves.

You can also host games in your shop, setting the format and the entry fee. A detail I love: you have to keep the place clean or players leave. Anybody who has ever spent time in a games shop will understand immediately.

Profits get reinvested: expand the space, unlock new card sets, upgrade the facilities.

What 1.0 changes

Two practical facts confirmed by the studio.

Your saves carry over. If you were playing 0.70, you pick your shop up where you left it. No need to start again, which was not guaranteed.

And Tetramon, the built-in card game, is played only against non-player characters. No multiplayer is planned in the near future. That is the thing to know before buying, because a lot of people were hoping otherwise.

What it is worth

At 17.41 euros, with two years of support behind it and a rating among the highest on Steam, this game has nothing left to prove.

I will still note what can irritate, because 96 per cent does not mean perfect.

It is a game of repetition. Order, shelve, sell, open. The loop is excellent, but it is a loop, and it does not reinvent itself after forty hours.

And it is single-player, which is always surprising in a genre built on community and tournaments. You will run a shop frequented by artificial customers.

But for a project started by somebody who simply wanted to see whether he could publish on Steam, the result is spectacular. We have written a guide to getting started, because the first shop is always a financial disaster.

How many packs did you open that you should have sold? We are doing the accounts on the InsertCoins Discord.