This new Steam management sim makes buying booster packs infinitely cheaper
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Trading card games are too expensive these days. I recently got back into Magic The Gathering, and the prospect of spending anywhere above $5 for a booster pack makes me physically recoil in fear. You can get better value for your money, but then you’re spending an unholy amount of cash on physical cards. Still, nothing beats going into your local shop, browsing the new sets on offer, and playing a couple of games. But if you’ve always wanted to run your own TCG shop, or get the thrill of opening boosters without spending inordinate amounts of cash, the newly released TCG Card Shop Simulator is answering the call.
Menial management games are, ironically, one of gaming’s biggest delights. You finish a long day of work only to sit down at your PC and run your own virtual business, but it’s oddly thrilling, and TCG Card Shop Simulator does exactly this for trading card games. You design the store layout, stock the shelves, host tournaments, and, yes, open an inordinate amount of booster packs.
While you can just sit there and open boxes of cards until the end of time, there’s a lot more to running a successful business. You should sell the ultra rares, order boosters and boxes online to restock, and eventually expand the size of your business when you’ve made enough money.
TCG Card Shop Simulator’s free demo proved to be a huge success right out of the gate, too. With just shy of 2,000 user reviews the demo is currently sitting at a 97% ‘overwhelmingly positive’ reception, and the full game is following suit. It’s peaked at over 5,300 concurrents already and has its own 96% rating from almost 300 reviews.
There’s something about store management simulators that reels us in. Supermarket Together recently took the internet by storm, and classics like Powerwash Simulator turn menial tasks into the perfect opportunity to shut your brain off and go into autopilot. So while it’s still early days for TCG Card Shop Simulator, it looks like this is another poised to join the pantheon of humble business games.
OPNeon Games has launched TCG Card Shop Simulator in Steam Early Access at 10% off, so expect to pay $11.69 / £9.89 until Sunday September 22. There’s also a free prologue you can play as well. You can find out more right here.
If you’d rather not break the bank though, we’ve got some great free Steam games you need to check out. Otherwise, here are all the best single-player games currently available on PC.
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