Retail Company Simulator Review

Retail Company Simulator is a… well, you can tell from the title. Developed by Business Tycoon (yes, really), in this game you’ll be working towards turning a small retail clothing store into a massive business where you can get any piece of apparel you desire.

Now, before I start actually playing the game, I feel I should talk about… well, popular games. Ever since Supermarket Simulator enthralled many players with the simple goal of running a grocery store back in February, there have been quite a few games released that have followed in similar footsteps. There’s Supermarket Together if you want a multiplayer variant, TCG Card Shop Simulator if you like card games, and finally Clothing Store Simulator, which lets you design your own clothes.

I… really don’t like these kinds of games, usually. It’s good to iterate and improve a genre and style, but it’s another to try and ride the coattails of something popular without doing anything special. We’ve seen this dozens of times throughout the history of videogames: The mascot platformer, the gritty warfighter, the survival sandbox, and the battle royale just to name a few. However, I’m always willing to give a game a fair shot, and I haven’t played Supermarket Simulator, so let’s see if it’s worth the trouble of interacting with human beings instead of using self-checkout.

Welcome to Heartless! We're not a discount Hot Topic (or discount anything).

So… what do you have to do? Well, at the start of every day, you’ll be free to prepare for opening as time does not move until you open the store. You’ll need to take inventory, buy products and contracts, purchase and fill the shelves and racks, and price items accordingly. Once you open your doors, you’ll be serving customers, taking note of complaints, taking their cash and giving correct change, and keeping an eye out for any bare shelves to stock up. Once the day is over and the last customer heads out the door, you can prepare for the next day by stocking up again before officially closing up and doing it all over again.

Seems like a standard (if overly involved) retail job, right? Well… yeah, it is, but it sounds like hell if you’re doing it all by yourself. As you level up, you get access to more upgrades, but also more customers to deal with. Thankfully, you aren’t going to be running the store alone as, at Level 7, you can hire NPC workers to help lighten the load.

God, I feel kind of proud my shop kind of looks nice.

It was actually a serious game changer once I could hire employees. I went from running around to keep up a steady flow of products while also dealing with customers, to just hanging out at the register most of the day, only needing to occasionally head to the in-game PC to order more clothes or change the pricing of items I forgot to change. I was pretty relaxed, watching YouTube videos on my phone in between customers. If only it was acceptable in real life…

If you think this is disorganised, you should see the giant box pile just behind me when I took this image.

My first play session of Retail Company Simulator, which I expected to last only about two or three hours, turned into seven hours of retail managing action. I got seriously addicted and had to stop myself so I could write this review. But I don’t have much else to say about the game, because what you see is what you get, it just does it very well. I could say the graphics could be better (one NPC looked like they were visibly balding on the spot) and I did notice people constantly trying to enter the store even when closed, but I say it gets a serious recommendation. And there’s still more to come. The game has been getting frequent updates, adding improved A.I., more languages, and genuinely helpful changes. Even now, they just released handbags, watches, glasses, and socks to sell. It’s a good game that no one should pass on if they’re interested.