• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Henry’s House
• Publisher: Akupara Games
• Release Date: December 8, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by Akupara Games on behalf of Henry’s House. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

My trading card journey began around the time that Yu-Gi-Oh! started gaining popularity in America. Although I preferred the Pokémon TV show, for some reason YGO’s trading card game clicked with me more. There was a TCG shop conveniently located next to a local middle school, and we’d go there and check out the new cards. I still have some of the tins and a few vintage decks. I’m hardly an expert on the TCG scene, but I remember those days fondly. So I was interested in checking out Kardboard Kings: Card Shop Simulator when I found out about it.

In the game, you’ll play as Harry Hsu, whose father was apparently involved in the creation of a popular card game called Warlock. Harry’s father sadly passed away, and left him a card shop – even though he doesn’t seem to know much about the game! Thankfully, a surprisingly eloquent talking cockatoo named Giuseppe, who worked with your father, is there to explain things along the way.

You start out with a small amount of cards in stock. Obviously, the goal is to make a profit – running out of money and cards means that you’ll go out of business and it’s game over. And off to the Shadow Realm with you. The game helps you out by displaying what you paid for a card as well as its current market value. If you check the news, trends are analyzed for you several days in advance. As a result, you can prepare by acquiring the cards that will be more popular and therefore more valuable for those days.

There are thirteen sets containing twelve cards each, plus six legendaries. (That’s over 150 cards for you to discover!) For the most part, you’ll get new cards on the parody website “gBay,” where you can purchase cards from individual sellers or just buy booster packs – plus new decorations for the shop. For individual cards, you can buy regular, damaged, or shiny versions. The sellers (and their stock) change every day, and it’s important to check the upcoming trends before you buy in order to maximize your profits. I didn’t really know how many cards to buy each day at first, so I tried not to buy too much inventory.

The news will let you know what kind of card(s) will be more profitable, but also the ones that will go down in price. The church disapproving of one kind of card will make its value go up due to the appeal of the forbidden, or a popular player may disclose their favorite card set and increase prices that way. Alternatively, a card may find itself on the ban list, which would result in a price decrease. You can see a card’s price history when you look at it, which I thought was a cool and interesting feature.

As the day goes by, customers will trickle into the shop to take a look at what you’re selling. The “generic” customers that come in don’t appear to have specific cards in mind, and they’ll usually choose to buy one of the six cards you have displayed for sale. Characters who act as supporting cast will sometimes come up to you and ask about purchasing a card on display or even in your undisplayed inventory. I liked that when someone mentions a card, the name is underlined and you can see which one they’re referring to before agreeing to anything. Whether the customer has a character portrait or not, they’ll only buy one card per visit. It might have added some variety – and money to your account – if someone bought more than one card per visit every once in a while.

Anyways, once a card sells, you can place another one for sale right away. There’s a sorting system that allows you to quickly access the cards you want to replace sold cards with while customers are still coming in and out of the store. Cards can be organized by price, set, abilities, color, and more. This also comes in handy when customers call the store with requests; these requests will always come with a budget and an expiration date. You’ll want to use cards that are slightly above the offered price range in order to boost your reputation (using less valuable cards will decrease your reputation).

Your shop’s reputation matters for several reasons. Business-wise it doesn’t make sense to alienate your customer base. But in the game, having a higher level of reputation will increase the chance of “rush hour” happening and bringing you much needed (extra) customers for the day. If you want to host tournaments in your shop, you’ll need to have an amazing reputation first. Other event options include clearance nights that increase your reputation and Booster Draft parties, where you open booster packs from newly released sets with some of your regular customers.

I liked the supporting cast of characters that come and see you in the shop. There are some non-customer characters like Declan, a weekly visitor from the “Commonwealth Card Retailer’s Union” who rewards you with decorations depending on how you performed on your shop goal for the week. He’ll also provide you with tags to place next to the cards you’re selling; their functions range from making a guaranteed sale to increasing/decreasing the price to drawing a customer into the store.

“Postie Gustaf” the mail carrier will bring your packages full of cards or decorations the day after you order them. I always looked forward to his visits, as he not only brought my new stock, but also allowed me to enjoy the game’s animations when I opened each envelope or package. Occasionally, the game would kind of freeze after opening a package or booster pack, but I was able to quickly quit and return to restart that day. ✉️ As for your loyal customers, they include a model, a little kid who livestreams in your shop, a PhD student focused on card games, and my favorite: Piccolo the dog, who collects the cards and plays the game too.

While I enjoyed my interactions with these characters, it did seem like they ran out of unused dialogue pretty quickly. There is also a story related to Warlock, the corporation that now owns it, and the legendary cards. But the credits for Kardboard Kings run in an odd place story-wise, with some plot events continuing to occur after the credits.

There’s a decent amount of things for you to do outside of running the shop and viewing plot-related events, though. You have a card binder to use to collect mint copies of every card in each set, and doing so will get you a decoration that goes with that set as a reward. Another goal is to get your hands on all six legendary cards. You can turn on King of Games mode, “a greater challenge for adventurous players.” And the final goal is to beat the new content included in the Switch version of Kardboard Kings: Card Game Island.

Eventually you will have the option to purchase a ticket to Card Game Island, which allows you to actually play the Warlock card game! Warlock gameplay involves a weapons triangle: brawn beats beauty, beauty beats brains (really? 😯😂 ), and brains beat brawn. Cards belong to one of those three ability categories, and then they have their power value and a color. You can place cards in the creature row or the support row; when things aren’t looking great in a matchup you can use the (color-restricted) support creatures to help you out.

Card Game Island has multiple matches for you to participate in, and if you lose you have to leave and don’t get the chance to get to the final match. I lost several times, and it can take a while for the opportunity to show up again on the gBay shop. It can also be a pretty pricey ticket depending on price fluctuations; I’d often have to miss out on going because I didn’t have the money for more inventory for the shop plus the ticket. It may have been nice to have Card Game Island more conveniently located on the main menu as a separate mode. That being said, Card Game Island is a really cool addition to an already fun game, and I’m glad they added it.

Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? Kardboard Kings: Card Shop Simulator is a unique management game that is hard to put down. The characters were likable and the story seemed to be going in an interesting direction, but dialogue and the plot both appeared to come to an end too soon for me. Sometimes the requests/shop goals and Card Game Island could be a bit difficult. However, it was still enjoyable to attempt those tasks. The game includes a lot of content, including the new update, and it’s incredibly satisfying to complete your card binder and decorate the shop. The card art is fantastic, and I loved how multiple artists contributed their work to the game. Kardboard Kings definitely has a lot of heart of the cards, and I think that fans of management games and TCGs will enjoy their time at Harry’s Card Shop. 8.5/10

The artists who contributed their work to the cards in Kardboard Kings did an amazing job. Here are links to their pages: raindemitree, Robert Ruszczyk, unfio, benchpillow, thingsbydiana, brooklynsnobs, rosarrie art, formigaartz, FeyFolk, Allen Sutton, Aye Jay/Salamander King, Andy Williams/Andy the Illustrator, Daniel Ang