Grocery Store Tycoon Review (PC)

I’ve pondered the textureless aisles more times than I’d like to admit—to the point where I no longer see customers hawking their contents, but cutouts of half-baked intellect and gluttony incarnate. I suppose, having been to countless grocery stores and seen the staff who work at them, I can sort of understand why they’re so darn miserable all the time. Oh, I’ve been doing this job long enough to know the difference between an enjoyable pastime and a frustratingly dull chore. And supermarket simulators, above all else, often fall into the latter field. It’s not that they’re instinctively bad; it’s that they’re a dime a dozen, and that they’re rarely structurally different. And so, when Grocery Store Tycoon parked up on my doorstep, I was torn between two schools of thought. Would it offer something original, or would it produce the same thing I’ve seen hundreds of times over?

Firstly, you don’t need a PhD in any field to know how Grocery Store Tycoon works, as it’s literally in its code. Like Supermarket Simulator or Grocery Store Simulator, it prides itself upon being an effective tool for allowing users the opportunity to plug into the life of a shopkeeper and to carry out the daily duties of a managerial candidate. From the humble roots of a husk of a stock-less business to the densely packed duplex of groceries and fresh produce, the game more or less invites you to fill the position of an overseer as the store takes the mandatory steps to accumulate mass wealth and economic prosperity. And if you think that sounds slightly familiar, and that you’ve heard of such a premise before, then I might as well burst your bubble before we proceed any further. Simply put — you have.

Aisle One, Please

It seems that I’ve painted Grocery Store Tycoon in a bad light up until now, which isn’t really fair, given that, at least speaking from a structural standpoint, it is equipped with all of the bells and whistles of a good business simulation game. The idea isn’t intriguing, but then, you don’t necessarily come to expect much more from a first-person simulator that centers its entire existence on a job that, quite frankly, we care so little about. Yet, there’s a market for these sorts of things, similar to how there’s a universal interest in simple but satisfying chores on a digital scale. Does Grocery Store Tycoon do enough to poach your intrigue? Absolutely not, but it rewards you for doing the jobs and following the breadcrumbs.

As far as gameplay goes, Grocery Store Tycoon isn’t drastically different from your traditional simulator. Case in point, the bulk of the journey sees you doing various mundane tasks à la Supermarket Simulator, such as stocking shelves, serving customers, acquiring better stock and upgrades to help expand your brand, as well as hiring and managing members of staff to help grease the wheels and develop the business model, so to speak. And I’ll be honest, there are plenty of options to explore here, too, with various produce, structural embellishments, and jobs to keep you busy over time. There’s building, albeit not as ironclad as it could be, and a surprisingly generous array of choices to consider, the latter of which allows you the chance to scrutinize the strategy and foster it to suit your needs. I can’t complain about any of that, even if it is somewhat simplistic and predictable.

A Flock of Wild Geese

I’ll be straight with you. Until now, I’ve never seen AI in an indie business simulation game that’s struck me as being both cohesive and authentically compelling. In the case of Grocery Store Tycoon, specifically, I’m still with the same mindset. Granted, the options for expanding the business are plentiful, but the patrons of the store, however, are a major pain in the neck — not because they’re incompetent, but because they’re incapable of mirroring human emotions and making conscious decisions that should be easy to follow. It’s a bit like wrangling geese, or shepherding sheep: the customers often flail around and act on their own accord, frequently forgetting that they’re not just some generic cardboard cutouts with an oversized basket. But that’s entry-level AI, I guess — you aren’t supposed to catch feelings for the clientele, only serve them and scoot them out of the door. Like actual retail work, then.

I won’t pretend that Grocery Store Tycoon is flush with competence and a sturdy UI, because it still bears the iron cross of a fairly shoddy indie sim, complete with a few loose screws and the odd technical error. Saying that, I do have to give credit where it’s due and say that, judging from the amount of attention that its developers have poured into amending its errors since the game’s inception, I do have faith in its future. And while it isn’t likely to dethrone, much less wrestle the surplus of like-minded cousins also vying for the apex any time soon, it is likely to attract that same ideal fan base that shares a common interest in career sims and depressingly gratuitous work.

Verdict

Grocery Store Tycoon’s lack of interest in broadening its horizons to amass more than the usual trappings of a generic business simulation game is, with respect, its greatest weakness—the fact that it doesn’t do much more than what countless others have already done in the past decade or so. Conceptually, it does the trick of keeping the four pillars stabilized by leaning on all of the appropriate fixtures—economic growth, inventory management, business evolution, and staff retention. It has all of that, but so does the vast majority of its ilk and adversaries, meaning that it’s hard to distinguish the differences between this and the other markets that don the same components and integral elements of a textbook tycoon simulator.

I will put my hands up and say that, in spite of its lack of originality and creativity, Grocery Store Tycoon does at least manage to bag the best possible nodes and capture that signature supermarket management feel surprisingly well. With its predictable yet sweetly satisfying gameplay loop and incentivized progression system in tow, the game does indeed have that special touch—the kind that anyone with a heart for generic chore core work will no doubt enjoy in spite of its lack of carrots on a stick to chase and career milestones to keep things fresh.

On the bright side, Grocery Store Tycoon does have a competent team behind it, with its best interests in the hands of its backers there to help steer the wheel, so to speak. And so, while the gameplay isn’t likely to be any more exciting in future updates, at least we can rest assured that it’ll be without the waning support and glitches that often plague a depressingly large amount of similar titles. That’s a huge plus, for sure.