Keiran McEwen
Keiran McEwenI believe the great philosophers of Summer once sang: “There’s a hundred and four shop simulators, ‘til big releases come along to just end it.” The shop simulator genre that kicked off with Supermarket Simulator has exploded into a billion and one games. Yes, it’s growing that quickly. With the latest being Turkish developer, Kiki Games’ diecast Matchbox car collection game, Supercar Collection Simulator. It is a (totally legally distinct, Mr lawyer Man) game about collecting and selling Hot Wheels of various rarities, designs, colors, and so on in mystery box format, accessories, and even tracks.
Similar to its TCG counterpart, Supercar Collection Simulator aims to be a niche within a niche directly pointed at people like me. Someone who would set up a Hot Wheels track in the living room and nearly break the glass door on the cabinet the TV stood on when cars would go flying. If you’ve played one of the good ones in the genre, you’ve basically played them all, and it is difficult to innovate, renovate, and entirely make your new release something totally special. Kiki Games’ Supercar Collection Simulator is not very different yet, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Putting aside the latest update to Nokta Games’ Supermarket Simulator, I think Supercar Collection Simulator is a bit closer to its niche TCG counterpart that I’ve also covered in recent months. Unlike the legally distinct Pokémon Shop sim and BiM Sim, however, Supercar Collection Simulator has a more unique art style for its people and world than what feels like a discount asset pack at this point. As I’ve said with all of these games releasing, I snort them like it is the 80s because they are podcast-listening fodder.
Despite being very much like everything else in the sub-genre, I like Supercar Collection Simulator. It has a few ideas on the horizon I’m looking forward to seeing more of. However, this early access launch is still the bare bones of showing a proof of concept. As you expect, you own a small hole-in-the-wall store that already has a small shelf for products and a register to bag and sell the items. You start simple with mystery box-style offerings and progressively build up to different rarities and more expensive products.
As the store expands, you’ll end up selling diecast cars individually, as much like TCG Card Shop Simulator, you can open the mystery boxes and collect diecast cars too. Each mystery box has 5 cars each, but again, there are different rarities and values within their specific collection. The first collection you have available is the basic ones, which are modeled after modern cars mostly, with the second collection “Faster” being a mix of modern American muscle cop cars and a lot of those 19th-century designs that look better than the silver industrial bins on wheels.
The super sexy, ultra-expensive ones you can trade are typical supercars until you get to the later series, where it very much is the Hot Wheels madness we’re used to. It even includes a car modeled after that weird thing from Fast & Furious 6. It all sounds very basic, all very “sure, but other than the Hot Wheels, what’s original about it?” Well, right now, not very much. You have the wholesaler, the store management (expansion), rent, your collection of cars, a leaderboard, and a skill collection (a card-based system), which as I say is very bare bones.
One of the most unique parts right now is the semi-anime-infused art direction and the small Asian (probably Japanese-inspired) neighborhood. I say Japanese because of the design, but the signs are in English and with the use of Kanji, plus the currency is in dollars; it feels like it is just a weird mix of the West’s ideas of Japan and Japan itself, as if Kiki Games was actually based in Türkiye and has an admiration for a mix of styles. It doesn’t make Supercar Collection Simulator bad (far from it) that is just where it is most unique right now.
The other unique point is the leaderboard, which is based on the value of the collection you’ve amassed from unboxing your legally distinct Hot Wheels. Realistically, it doesn’t add much to gameplay for me. It doesn’t matter that I have $3000 in diecast cars vs XX69GodXX, who has $130,000 from unboxing the stock. That isn’t why I’m playing. You can eventually play against people in the store if you have tracks set up, like TCG Card Shop Sim’s areas to play in the stores, which is where you use the skill cards you can also unlock. However, without workers, you’re leaving the register unmanned.
You can’t hire anyone just yet though, as that and several other things (like the stock inventory and pricing) are features still to be added. You can still stack boxes in the corner and change the price tags individually, which makes Supercar Collection Simulator feel a bit “old” in the shop simulator genre. At least in comparison to those that have been out for several months to a year at this point. However, it still has all the qualities of the genre that we’re used to and love.
Following the early access release, there was an update that added the PVP trading system, which I never got a full crack at. You select 10 cars and “play a luck-based trading game,” according to the Steam post. This can be played either with friends or with others online, but you need to create multiplayer rooms (lobbies) to do so, and given I’m about as anti-social as a Raccoon holding a baseball bat and foaming at the mouth, that’s not exactly fun. Neither is the waiting, if you decide to go for an open session.
In my experience, it was taking upwards of 5 minutes, which could just be the anti-social hours I keep. If you play with friends, I could see this being something that adds to the experience. I’d like to say more, but the trading system is probably better experienced when there are more than just the early adopters who saw the Instagram ads and said, “That looks so bloody cool!” As I might have a little over a week ago before release.
The balance is fine, but you don’t make enough money to constantly expand alongside the levels you gain from XP. You get enough to make a small profit and maybe restock, but you aren’t massively able to expand and have shelves stacked miles high in the name of the god of capitalism, Profit. There is just enough of a challenge to keep you on your toes, but enough profit to keep you from starting over after a couple of days or eventually weeks. However, there is one thing that makes Supercar Collection Simulator that is totally unique in my experience: 24-hour delivery, or rather you can order after 21:00.
What I keep coming back to every time I’ve tried to write this over the better part of the last week has been: “Supercar Collection Simulator is the same as every other game in the genre,” but what it does, it does it well with something many of us are a bit nostalgic for. That’s what I think is the big difference. While TCG Card Shop Sim ignites the Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! memories, many of which I still have, Supercar Collection Simulator reminds me of the little 2004 release of the Sharkruiser I had.
That’s who Supercar Collection Simulator is for, someone who thinks about that silly little design a lot. If you know actual car designs, you’ll be able to guess the makes and models of cars here, as not a lot of them are shark-based or other “outlandish” things you’d see from Hot Wheels. The “Elite” series in-game is the closest you’ll get, but even those aren’t as out there as some almost Wacky Races-like designs you’ll find out in the wild. I like it, it isn’t too out there and it isn’t too grounded, but most of all it does what all of these games should be doing which is just an enjoyable gameplay loop.
Ultimately, Supercar Collection Simulator isn’t giving the whole genre a new life, but at the end of the day, it is a great foundation to build on with a roadmap. For once, a roadmap that isn’t too ambitious or too cluttered with added features to appease an audience that is never going to be happy. Supercar Collection Simulator is unapologetically what Kiki Games wants it to be, and exactly what it needs to be. It is podcast fodder for that “I want to play something while I listen to a murder mystery or wrestling stories.” moment. It is the drown out and do remedial work sort of game the genre is known for, and it does it well so far.
A PC preview copy of Supercar Collection Simulator was provided by Kiki Games for this review.
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