‘Blindbox Shop Simulator’ from developer NovaraGames wants you to “Open your own blind box store in the anime city of Akigabra”. Let’s have a look at the preview and see what the simulator is all about and if it stacks up in this early form.

​You start in front of a small shop in the city of Akigabra, which is reminiscent of downtown Tokyo, with lots of neon lighting, cherry blossom trees, and interesting architecture. During the preview, it felt a bit lifeless as there was no movement on the streets, but looking through the preview videos on Steam, there are cars and more people in the full version of the game.

Once you give your shop a name, it appears in a neon sign above the door. My store, “Geeks R Us”, is nearly ready to open. Now it’s time to order your stock. Opening your tablet, you are greeted with a few options, not all of them working since this is a preview version. Shop, expansion, bank, email, employee, pricing and bills.

When ordering your products, there is a nice progression system as well. You start with only being able to order stock in boxes of six, and as you progress, you can order bigger boxes of thirty-six for quicker restocking.

Once your order is complete and paid for, you pick the stock up from outside the shop, bringing it in and restocking the display cases. Once the box is empty, you have to take it back to the bin outside near the drop off point, it’s a little bit of a distance and actually quite annoying.

A stock room or something similar would have been a good idea. The shelves are stocked, now it is time to turn the neon open sign on, and the customers start to flood in. During the preview, there were four different blindboxes with similar names to the real-world counterparts.

The models were amazing; some great detail has been put into them, and you also have the ability to pick them up and rotate them, showing how much work has gone into them. As you continue to progress, you can unlock more expansions to increase the size of your shop to fit in more stock and display cabinets to try to make your shop stand out.

Like all shop simulator games, you have to serve your customers, scanning the items and taking payment. There are three types of payment you take at the register: cash, card or tap and go. All have to be manually actioned on the cash register, and change given for cash. As you progress through the levels, you can hire staff to take over the register function, which is a welcome relief, and you can also unlock self-service registers to keep those queues down.

What I love about this game is that you also have the ability to open up the blindboxes as well and add to your own personal collection. You are given a collector’s binder, and you can either store the blindboxes you open or put them up for sale to make a quick dollar back. I found myself sinking a lot of my store profits from sales back into my own personal collection.

You have various display cases for the blind boxes you open, one where you can put your collections up for sale or one that is just for display and decoration to show off your rare items and bring people into the store.

While talking about decorations, there are a large number of options to fill your shop with display cases, racks, posters, floor textures, lights and many more options to ensure you can give your shop its own little flair.

It was locked for the preview, but you can put a streamer station in your store and hire a streamer to open boxes live to gain more followers and customers, a neat little feature. It’s all these small gems I love, thinking outside the box.

​The graphics are on point, and the developers really have leant into the collectables theme. From the bright signs and displays, neon lights all around the store, it really sets a warm environment. There is a good variation of customers that come through the store all dressed differently, and as mention the detailed graphics in the collectables are top class. The ability to also customise the walls, floor and outside painting of the shop really means you can give your shop the artistic flair you have dreamed of if you were running your own blindbox store.

I was actually a little disappointed when the preview said the time was up. I was having a lot of fun with this game. My store wasn’t hugely successful as I kept taking products off the shelf, looking for those rare items, but that’s the fun part; it’s something different.

Looking up Blindbox Box Shop Simulator on their Steam page as well, there are more great features coming with life-size decorations, larger stores and more products. I have added this one to my wishlist and can’t wait for the full version to come out.

Written by: Mike Bridge