Kardboard Kings — Many cards. Left bored?

When they said I’d be running a card shop in Kardboard Kings, I was expecting more spiky-haired teenagers to turn up and challenge me to a duel.

Kardboard Kings fills an incredibly niche gap in the market: a shop management game themed around collecting and selling trading cards in the vein of Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon. There are plenty of games in this genre doing the rounds, in which you run a store, get to know the locals, and try to make a fortune or find your way through some sort of story, but none themed around something quite so small scale. Having something of an interest in trading card games, I decided to give this a go and find out just how wealthy I could get.

Spoilers: not very.

You play as Harry, a man who has recently inherited a card shop from his late father. Harry’s dad was heavily involved in the globally recognised card game Warlock — think Magic: The Gathering and you’re pretty much there — and his shop exclusively sells cards for the game. Now you have to take over and try to make a profit, in spite of being no expert on the game yourself. You’ll need to get to know the regulars, keep yourself well stocked with cards, and contend with the ever changing card game market. No one will try to steal your Blue Eyes White Dragon though.

The bulk of Kardboard Kings has you checking online to buy individual cards or card packs which you put on display in one of six slots in your shop. Whilst you can’t set the price yourself, rumours in the news will hint at which cards are due to gain or lose value in the coming days. Choose wisely and you’ll turn a profit, badly and you’ll make a loss. You’ll also need to maintain a decent reputation amongst customers to keep them coming back by simply being nice to those that talk to you, and completing specific requests that occasionally come in.

Mechanically, this is pretty sparse. A lot of games of this ilk give you the freedom to set your own prices, or even use your products for yourself — more on that in a bit. Not here though, as the best you can do is apply ‘tags’ to cards, that might make them more valuable at the cost of your reputation, or vice-versa. You can choose to keep cards for yourself to keep in your ledger, but this only allows you to unlock some display items, which is nice, but doesn’t really do much unless you are looking to collect everything in the game or just make your shop look a bit prettier.

What’s a bit more engaging, are the stories. Some of the customers will have regular conversations with you, and you can find out what’s going on with their lives. Learning about the mailman Gustaf’s house moving woes, Kei’s night time card battles with demons, or even the creator of Warlock themself are quite enjoyable, and you’ll find some of them rather endearing. There’s even an overall story about how corporate greed has affected people’s love of the game — quite on point considering how some people see games like Pokémon these days — and this was enhanced through stories of six legendary cards that would grant power to anyone that finds them. I enjoyed this quite a bit.

And then it just ends. You see a card battle between the current world champion and the creator of the game, and then the story ends. There are hints that there’s more story to unlock, and you can still develop plots with certain characters, but the main plot just ends suddenly. I thought there would be more if I managed to collect the legendary cards, and undertaking that was quite frustrating as there are no hints in the game about where they can be found, but even that led to nothing more than a filled page in my ledger. This was quite disappointing, and I was hoping for there to be at least something more, but all that was left at this stage was to open the shop, sell some cards, rinse and repeat.

That’s not to say the core gameplay loop isn’t fun. It’s actually got something of a zen feeling about it as you read the news, plan your card purchases and try to turn a profit each day. I enjoyed this quite a bit for a while, but this can only hold your attention for so long. Things like running a tournament, or a draft night for new sets are nice additions, but don’t really change up what you’ll be doing.

This is a real pity, as there are so many ways that Kardboard Kings could be developed further. Additional characters, a broader story, and an actually playable version of the card game — why is this not included?! There are some neat events like new card sets being released, but this only occurs a handful of times before you’re left with about 100 to buy and sell. Considering Warlock is meant to have been around for decades, that’s a pretty small number to be available. I understand that creating all these cards could be a fairly tall order, but without the actual card game to play and so no need to worry about balancing, a few more sets being released throughout the game surely could be managed.

The cards themselves look really nice though. There’s some great and diverse art on display from some talented artists, some of which mimics card games in the real world. I appreciated the effort put into these greatly, I just wish there were more of them to expand the game further. Outside of the cards, the character art is equally solid, and the visuals in the main game are fairly simple, but work nicely for the single perspective you’re locked to throughout. The music is also quite nice, fitting that background sound you’d pick up in a store well, although you will hear a lot of it as you play.

Ultimately, I did find some enjoyment in Kardboard Kings. The quirky characters and initial enjoyment of discovering and collecting new sets of cards kept me coming back. But after the story ended abruptly after around three hours with little more to offer after that, I found it somewhat a hard sell. When I look at the likes of Recettear, a similar game from over a decade ago, and the amount of game world it offers, Kardboard Kings feels quite basic in comparison. If you’re absolutely adamant that you need a game in which you run a car shop, this is certainly the best on the market, but for everyone else you may want to look elsewhere if you want more meat on the bone.

Kardboard Kings is available now on Steam.