I love a great simulation game. It generally doesn’t matter what the subject is; I love the methodical task-based gameplay that most sim games provide. If you can give me a subject that speaks to me, especially one full of nostalgia, even better. Retro Arcade Shop Simulator is developed by Alt Tab Game and published by Ultimate Publishing, Ultimate Games S.A and PlayWay S.A and is a business management sim where you clean, design, build and run a neon-lit 1980s arcade. As a child of the 80s, this game has massive nostalgia appeal for me.
Starting with an empty space, you pick a name of your own choosing. After all, this is a business management sim, and it’s your business, so make it your own. Clean up the space to start, mopping up spills and picking up trash. You are given a checkout desk to start (thankfully, since it’s $10,000 to buy one and you don’t want to start in debt to the bank). Over time, you will add classic arcade cabinets, pinball, air hockey, racing sims and bowling areas.
Don’t forget to add token dispensers for the customers. You will spend a lot of time running around in the beginning, emptying the tokens from machines, serving customers, performing cleaning and repairing tasks.
Eventually you will be able to hire staff to help, and this will free you up slightly, but by then you will likely have added a cafeteria (serving burgers, fries, drinks, etc.), meaning you will have even more tasks to attend to.
Decorate and remodel to make the space your own. You will be able to eventually open 10 different rooms for your business.
Your task is to grow your business from the dusty storefront you start with to a booming empire. Almost every game in your shop is fully interactive. Be sure to take a break from time to time and play a few games yourself.
This game is coming soon to early access. This means that what you play initially may or may not be what the final game looks like in its final form. Early access is also a good way for the devs to listen to feedback and make the game better.
Speaking of what may or may not be in the final game, there are a few assets (particularly the menu boards in the cafeteria area) that suspiciously look like they were AI-generated. The spelling isn’t real words, and this may be intentional to avoid a particular language, and I don’t want to jump to conclusions here. I will include the excerpt from their Steam store page below and let you draw your own conclusions.
From their Steam page: “AI was used as an assistive tool for creating specific texture patterns, supporting code development, and producing videos for the game. All generated content was manually reviewed, edited, and refined by our team.
As a small independent game studio, we use AI to support our creative workflow. All final content was created and approved by our team.”
The demo gave me enough time to see that this is a solid simulation game, full of nostalgia, and I’ll be keeping my eyes on this closer to launch for sure.
Until next time…be good to yourself and be good to each other.
**Special Thanks to Keymailer for the review code**
Ophelia Payne 
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