TCG Card Shop Simulator Switch 2 Review
Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
I’ve been wanting to try out TCG Card Shop Simulator ever since my friends started telling me about it on PC. Who wouldn’t want to try their hand at running a card store, opening packs, selling cards, and building up a business from the ground up? Unfortunately, I’ve mistakenly purchased a few imitation titles that just don’t quite make the deck. While the eShop may be flooded with asset-flip clones, this is the real deal. TCG Card Shop Simulator has finally unwrapped on Nintendo Switch 2, bringing with it the premise of running your very own trading card shop. But is the heart of the cards in our favour? What’s It Like? Clock in, start stocking shelves, and get behind the register as we review TCG Card Shop Simulator on Nintendo Switch 2.
TCG Card Shop Simulator lets you create the card shop of your dreams… but those dreams start off with a budget, so you’ll have a single shelf, a small amount of cash, and a can-do attitude. Progression is slow and hard-fought, initially giving you access to only basic card packs and boxes, which you purchase, stock on shelves, and set prices for. Prices constantly fluctuate, so a good businessperson will check and adjust those prices accordingly. This is made fairly painless as you’ll have a market price to work from, then the ability to increase it in 10% increments, and even round it to the nearest whole figure… something you should definitely do to avoid dealing with all the change at the checkout. Shortly after you open up, your shop will start increasing in levels, offering new licences to obtain so you can sell different card sets, plushies, card albums, starter decks, and much, much more. My only issue with this license fee, is that boxes of higher quantities didn’t offer a unit discount, so it was cheaper to just order more boxes in a smaller quantity rather than pay exorbitant fees for larger box quantities.
It’s a really fun loop: ordering and stocking products, manning the cash register, and eventually setting up tournaments to bring new customers into your shop. They’ll pay for their time at the table and, hopefully, purchase something on the way out. You will have to serve customers, listen to them talk about the price of your stock and adjust accordingly, and even help a stinky customer out with some liberal use of deodorant aerosols. I eventually set up a stinky trap that would automatically deodorise stinky customers when they walked in the door to avoid their stench scaring off paying customers. But customers aren’t the only ones who can feel the excitement of opening packs and finding rare cards, as you can nab some stock off the shelf, open them up, and trade or sell individual cards for more profit. Eventually, you can even get a machine that opens entire boxes of cards at a time, highlighting the rare and valuable ones and automatically adding them to your album. You can even build your own deck and play the Tetramon game with customers, which unfortunately was very overwhelming and confusing. There’s some thoughtful quality-of-life mechanics here, mainly once you set a price for a product. If you decide to put it on a different shelf, the game will remember the price automatically, so you don’t have to fiddle about with stock and prices every time you change your shop around… something I did frequently.
At first, I checked out tips and tricks on the internet to maximise profits, but after a few days, I grew tired of my setup because maximising profits meant the store wasn’t the way I wanted it to be. Instead, I started setting up areas. A section for dice and board games, some plushie shelves, card boosters and starter decks, along with protective sleeves and albums. In making the store mine, I really started to enjoy my time with TCG Card Shop Simulator. I loved the idea of having a row of tables for customers, and sections of my store dedicated to different hobbies. Eventually, I was able to hire a staff member to help me stock the shelves, especially since I was ordering 20-odd boxes of stock. Unfortunately, my new employee showed up wearing sandals and dropped the stock the second it was time to clock off, despite not doing much at all. You get what you pay for, I suppose, and on top of staff wages, you will have to manage both rent and power bills, so switch those lights off during the day to save some money! I still haven’t expanded my shop to the maximum size or maxed out my profit margins, but there’s something so satisfying about making the shop how I want it to be that makes the day-to-day running of “Grizzly Games” such a joy to play.
While I did enjoy the day-to-day operations, I felt the repetition start to kick in. Hampered by high licensing fees and the constant need to keep on top of stock orders, progress did feel slow at times, and I found myself doing a lot of busywork and repetitive tasks. I do wish progression was a little more streamlined, or that the licence fees weren’t quite so ridiculously high, as some require one or two days’ takings just to unlock them. This often left me deciding whether I should restock my shelves or purchase a licence and hope I could make enough money the next day to slowly rebuild my stock. For me, it’s all part of the challenge, and after taking a short break, I got back into it and didn’t mind the grind quite as much. But for those looking for something a little more fast-paced, you might find the tedium starts to set in around the 15-hour mark or so. There’s a great game underneath it all, but you’ll need to be willing to put in the work to see your little card shop grow.
When it comes to visuals, TCG Card Shop Simulator is a bit of a mixed bag. Customers and objects within your store are simply serviceable, with nothing that really stands out or wows. Randomised customers will slowly meander into your shop throughout the day, helping the store feel alive, although there’s not a huge amount of visual variation between them. The products themselves look much better, with the shelves gradually filling with colourful booster packs, boxes, plushies, dice, albums and other TCG paraphernalia. It does a good job of making your shop feel increasingly packed with things to look at as you unlock more products and expand your business. Then there’s the Tetramon TCG itself, which is where the visuals really come to life. The card artwork is fantastic and feels fully realised, with cards coming in several variations that determine their value. Whether you’re selling them to customers or opening packs yourself in the hope of finding something rare, the artwork makes the cards feel like something you’d actually want to collect… which you will throughout your TCG business journey.
When it comes to performance, TCG Card Shop Simulator targets 60fps on Nintendo Switch 2, and for the most part, it does a great job of maintaining that target. I didn’t encounter any major performance issues during my time with the game, and the day-to-day running of the shop felt smooth, even as I started filling the store with more products and customers. There are a few minor bits of jank here and there, though. Products can sometimes flop down onto the counter in an awkward fashion, while customers occasionally walk straight through each other without a care in the world. Thankfully, these are purely visual quirks and never affected the gameplay. I did notice some strange visual artefacts on certain products, where they appeared to have an almost PNG-like grid or cube surrounding them. It’s not something that ruins the experience, but it is noticeable when you spot it, and I’d expect this is the kind of visual issue that could be cleaned up in a future patch. Outside of these minor oddities, TCG Card Shop Simulator runs really well on Switch 2.
For my business managers looking into accessibility, there are some options you can choose from, like remapping all controls, changing the reticle size and colour, and changing the field of view. As always, I recommend further research into finding out if TCG Card Shop Simulator suits your accessibility needs. At just under $31 AUD, I think TCG Card Shop Simulator is right on the money with its price point, offering a fun experience that will keep most players hooked for quite some time.
For me, TCG Card Shop Simulator was worth the wait on Switch 2. It’s a fun, addictive gameplay loop that has a surprising amount of management depth without dragging you down into spreadsheets. I just hope this doesn’t get dismissed as another clone, because there’s a very clever and fun game here that deserves to be given a chance. TCG Card Shop Simulator is at its best when you make it your own, so stock up, rearrange those shelves, and make the sort of card shop you would love to visit. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to give Kevin a written warning about appropriate footwear and then get back to serving customers. Score check on aisle two!
So, What’s it Like? TCG Card Shop Simulator is like Gas Station Simulator, crossed with Pokemon TCG.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by the publisher, but this doesn’t influence my score.
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