TCG Card Shop Simulator turned me into a monster and I love it

There are plenty of games that let you be the bad guy. Take Baldur’s Gate 3’s Dark Urge, for example. Within five minutes of starting the game you’ve got the option to tear a stranded wizard’s arm off and you can conclude the whole affair by bending the entire world to your twisted, bloody will. But even that pales in comparison to the monster I became playing TCG Card Shop Simulator.

Available on PC through Steam Early Access, TCG Card Shop Simulator puts you in charge of your own trading card shop, selling packs of Pokémon-style cards, stuffed toys, board games and other accessories. It operates like other business simulators, but the real game-changer is that you can open packs of cards yourself.

I could feel the dopamine trickling into my brain as I peeled open my first pack, flashing back to my primary school days when I’d spend half my pocket money on Panini stickers. But, three stickers in, I hit paydirt, a Tetramon card with a resale value of $400, and from that moment the darkness had me.

I quickly adopted a policy of one packet for the shelf, one packet for me. Any find worth more than $10 ended up on my card table, ready for customers to purchase. And purchase they did; I could scarcely believe when one of them made a beeline for that $400-odd card, but, thirty seconds later I was checking them out with a grin that’d put the Joker to shame.

The more rarities I resold, the bolder I became. TCG Card Shop Simulator doesn’t let you shut the door, but flipping the Open/Closed sign is enough to force the customers to stand outside. I let them watch as I ordered a 64-pack box of Tetramon cards and then opened every single one, gazing at them through the glass.

On some level, I knew that I should be hiding my shame, leaning against an alley wall, while a family of rats observed me with barely-disguised disdain. But TCG Card Shop Simulator doesn’t even have a toilet, so my crimes went on in full view of my card-buying customers. And, even so, they still filed back in to purchase the $455 Crobib I’d flaunted in front of them.

In my defence, as unethical as this may be, it’s by far the easiest way to make money in TCG Card Shop Simulator, at least when you’re starting out. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked in retail but I still bear the mental scars — and fleecing my computer-controlled customers is a pleasingly cathartic way of dealing with that.

It also makes me a horrible, horrible hypocrite given how much I’ve grumbled about scalpers. If developer OPNeon Games ever makes a sequel set in a video game store, I’ll be building an igloo of 30th Anniversary PlayStation 5 Pros, and then selling them at $2,000 apiece.

It gets worse, too. I’m relatively early on in the game, but I’m already calculating ways to take my card flipping to the next level. You can hire staff in TCG Shop Simulator and while you’re supposed to have them working the cash register or putting out stock, I have a different arrangement in mind.

I’m thinking, instead, of a vast back room with packets upon packets being ripped open, like Veruca Salt’s father in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Yes, this whimsical, well-meaning game has me thinking about running a sweatshop, mining the rare not-Pokémon cards I need to expand my empire even further.

What lessons can I take away from this? Mainly that I am a terrible person and that, virtual as TCG Card Simulator may be, my ethics are very cheaply bought. I’m swimming in dopamine and dollars and, short of the TCG Police ramming their patrol car through my window, I’m never stopping.