I’ve been a huge fan of all things trading card games for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I was obsessed with the worlds of Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Magic: The Gathering, where sitting across the table with friends or family was almost a ritual. Sit down, pop open the deck box, shuffle your cards, and the game begins. The local card shop was one of the greatest spots ever, table after table of shared passion and battles between cards and wits. Since then, in the back of my mind sat a quiet dream: opening my own card shop.
TCG Card Shop Simulator, developed and published by OPNEON Games, is that dream made manifest. It gives you your own card shop to build from the ground up. It’s already been a massive success in Early Access, the simplicity of the presentation working well alongside the depth of the systems. Now TCG Card Shop Simulator heads to consoles in 1.0, with a major, fan-requested feature: a playable Tetramon TCG.
Before you can actually get to sitting down and playing the card game, you need to first get your shop to a certain level. Things start simply enough: a cash register and one shelf in a small building. Set down a card table for players to use, order some products, and you can open your doors to the public.
The gameplay loop is simple, but really engaging and keeps you coming back day after day. There are online catalogues that you can order products from—starting with simple booster packs and card sleeves. As you level up, new products become available. TCG Card Shop Simulator first makes you buy a license for the item, and once you buy that, you’re able to buy that product going forward. Once you order it, it instantaneously shows up outside the shop, which you then need to bring in, unbox, put on the shelf, throw out the box, and set the price.
“TCG Card Shop Simulator really nails that feeling of opening packs, along with the dopamine hit of pulling something awesome.”
People come and go from your shop, and when they’re ready to buy, you need to cash them out. As your shop gets more successful, you can expand and decorate it to make the card shop of your dreams. You can even hire new employees that can take over some duties, giving you more time to customize and rip packs. It’s not all glamorous though, as some shop-goers come in smelling and need to be sprayed down; otherwise you’ll get complaints about the smell.
TCG Card Shop Simulator really nails that feeling of opening packs, along with the dopamine hit of pulling something awesome. Knowing you just hit a card that can be sold for a few hundred dollars, meaning a new license for rarer packs becomes a reality, is a great feeling. There’s even a grading system, where you can send cards off to be analyzed. The higher the returning score, the more the card can be sold for.
The overall economy works really well, with different trends that come and go that you need to pay attention to if your shop will succeed. The only real issue with the game economy is that the licensing can be too expensive. It makes some items feel less important because the licensing fee can be so high that it’s better to just buy more product to make more money. Leveling starts to slow down considerably as you get higher up too, without a different way to really level up outside of the same core routes. TCG Card Shop Simulator is more about scale than quality, and the higher you go, the more that becomes clear.
TCG Card Shop Simulator’s major new 1.0 addition is the inclusion of a playable Tetramon TCG. The actual card game is fun, with an interesting gameplay loop built around different elemental types. Each card has a core type with four elemental affinities, stronger in some ways than others. You play a card into each card type and try to take your enemy’s life total from 500 to 0. Cards have different play effects, from drawing cards to discarding, nailing the deck-building strategies you’ll find in many real-life TCGs. You can make graveyard decks, plan draw engines, get aggressive with strong mons – all viable strategies as long as you have the cards to back them up.
The major issue with Tetramon is the onboarding. At no point does TCG Card Shop Simulator tell you that you can start deck-building or that it’s tied to the workbench item that you get after leveling up enough. Even then, the item description for the workbench doesn’t actually make it clear that it’s needed to build your deck. Once you stumble onto it, the actual process of making your deck is similarly clunky. You pick one card, take it out of the binder, and add it to your deck. It’s slow, especially when there are pre-built decks that you sell at the shop that you can’t use, for whatever reason.
There’s also no tutorial game to help you learn Tetraman, rather a rulebook that you need to read through. It makes for a clunky tutorial rather than a smooth ride in, which is really important when learning a new TCG. Onboarding aside, TCG Card Shop Simulator lets you plan and play in tournaments, and go up against card shop customers to test your new decks. Tetramon is a surprisingly deep and varied TCG, with the added layer of actually running your card shop creating an interesting dynamic. Every pack you open is one you can’t sell outright, but the cards you pull can now either be sold or added to your own deck. It’s a lot of fun, even if the actual act of deck-building could be smoother.
“The actual card game is fun, with an interesting gameplay loop built around different elemental types.”
Overall, TCG Card Shop Simulator is a lot of fun, with a deep card economy and a new TCG that is a lot of fun to engage in. Balancing the success of the shop with your personal TCG aspirations makes for an experience that keeps you coming back for more. Even if the economy needs some balancing and the onboarding for Tetramon needs improvement, the overall gameplay loop is a blast. TCG Card Shop Simulator let me create the card shop I’ve always wanted.
