Shopkeeper Simulator, developed by Games Incubator and published in collaboration with PlayWay S.A., is a supermarket management sim that invites players to build their retail empire from scratch, released on July 22, 2025. Every simulator fan knows PlayWay S.A, but does that mean the game has to be good? Let's see....

You arrived in the big city with only a crate of apples, your laptop and $40 in your pocket, that's basically all, there is no real big story to this game, it's a really simple game when you run your own small shop, taking care of everything from stocking shelves and setting prices to keeping your customers happy, and even cleaning the mess they leave behind. That's fine, right? A story would be nice, sure, but it's not necessary, we are just here to run a shop, so we can fully focus on that.

Your shop at the beginning is pretty small and empty, there's just a single shelf for fruits and vegetables, a standard counter with a cash register, and a spot for your laptop, and that’s it, but hey, we all started somewhere, right? Even though your shop starts off small, there's actually a lot you can do. You can buy product licenses to unlock new items for your shelves, from a simple red apple to a box of breakfast cereal. As you invest in shelves and fridges, your shop gains a store level, which lets you unlock expansions and grow your store into something much, much bigger. 

Eventually, you can even hire employees, which becomes super useful in the later stages when you're stocking new items or just keeping up with the old ones. Every time you introduce a new product, you'll need to set its price manually. The game's pretty generous with that feature, just like in real life, where some shops set unfair prices on items that are way cheaper elsewhere. Honestly, it's smart to start with a higher price, because money is tight early on, and it takes a while to afford all those upgrades and products and if your prices are too high, customers will inform you about that in the background, but no worries, you can always lower the price to keep them happy.



Shopkeeper Simulator also gives you the option to take out loans which can really help early on. They are not huge amounts, like $100 at store level 1, $500 at level 5, and $1000 at level 10, You can't take all loans at once though, if you take out a loan, you need to pay it off before another one becomes available. It’s a simple feature, but it adds a nice touch of realism and strategy to managing your store and I really like that. It actually helped me out too, especially since money is pretty tight in the early game.

The graphics in Shopkeeper Simulator are simple and clean. Everything is easy to read, and the interface doesn’t overwhelm you, it's just really simple. The game also runs well, I didn’t had any major optimization issues, even as my store got bigger and busier. Sure, there might be a few frame drops when the shop is packed with customers, but nothing game-breaking and it might be also my fault, I tend to Alt-Tab a lot and randomly opening browser with a lot of cards. I did have one repetitive bug when I was trying to place a new shelf, I suddenly started to "float", kind of like I got stuck in a texture, which looked pretty weird, but it didn’t break the game though, and I managed to work around it in the end.

The least realistic thing here, I believe, is when you order your box of items, they’re literally on the street. Especially if you're ordering more products at the same time like I was (I was spamming them), they end up messily laying around, which isn’t really realistic, but I can turn a blind eye to it.

Okay, it's not perfect, but it's perfectly playable. It’s pretty simple, but that's fine. I can totally say that if you're interested in running your own shop and expect it to be simple while still finding it interesting, then yeah, you can totally get it. Why not? I don't really have much more to say, it's just a simple, good game for people who like this kind of style.

System Requirements:

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit
• Processor: Intel Core i3 3.0 GHz
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Intel Arc 380, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 8 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX compatible
• Additional Notes: Recommend installation on an SSD drive
  
  

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 10 64 Bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5 3.4 GHz
• Memory: 10 GB RAM
• Graphics: Intel Arc 580, GTX 1660 Ti
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 8 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX compatible
• Additional Notes: Recommend installation on an SSD drive