TCG Card Shop Simulator Review

TCG Card Shop Simulator is such a great and addictive game in which you run your own TCG store while also collecting the cards yourself. However, it is GRINDY to unlock all the achievements! Very very very grindy!

Approximate amount of time to 100%: Around 80 hours with mods, without I would guess around 120 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I watched some of KeldorGaming’s videos for tips for the tricky achievements, but most of them you’ll just unlock while playing the game.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Yes, calling them grindy even feels like an understatement…
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

TCG Card Shop Simulator is so addictive and fun! Before I bought the game I watched so many YouTubers playing this and it looked perfect to me, as I’m such a sucker for games in which you run a store. The game didn’t disappoint but it was even grindy-er than I thought it would be based on what I saw streamers play.

First of all, I’m blown away by the amount of detail that went into this game. Not only for the TCG cards and their special effects like foil or a line around the border but you can also choose your currency and the money changes in the register. And What I also loved to see is that the customers had their own bag as well as having shipping costs when you order new stock from the distributor. As those are things in a irl shop as well that matters. You don’t get products to your store for free, there is always a catch. I can also see how showing how hard it is to get the special cards might also be an eye opener on how much money has to be spent irl to get those special types of cards as well, or how lucky you need to be. This is just a guess, as I don’t collect or play any TCG irl as I hate the randomness and different seasons to let you spend more money.

The first 25 hours of TCG Card Shop Simulator were amazing. Working towards unlocking the next set of cards, hiring staff to take over some of your tastes, it is great and kept me going! However, at some point, the grindyness starts to creep in. Goals are getting further away, opening packs yourself doesn’t give you as many new cards as before and some of the achievements are a long way to go. This might chance the further this game gets closer to the 1.0 release, as I know the dev has plans to add the option to play the tcg game itself and possibly loads of other things. Seeing how many updates there were already to improve things give my high hopes for it being less grindy in the end.

Loads of the achievements you’ll just get by playing the game. For only a few of them you might want to do something special as change your stock, or have staff fulfill different roles. The achievements that will take the longest are:
– 5k customers played in your store: This can be done faster by sending them away as soon as both sit down and start the game, as that will already count as playing in your store.
– Shop level 100: Selling items and opening booster give experience, so this is just a matter of time.
– Collect 2500 different cards: This is really grindy, especially with just the game without mods, as you can only hold 8 booster packs in your hand and the speed of opening is so slow and you need to hold/click a lot of times. There are mods to increase the speed of opening items and the amount of boosters you can hold. That way you can also do other things while working toward this achievement.

I give TCG Card Shop Simulator 4 out of 5 stars. This would be higher if the game wasn’t so so grindy in the end.

This review for TCG Card Shop Simulator was written on 15 November 2024, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 40 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.