Shipping Store Simulator 2037 – Review
Welcome… to the world of tomorrow! It’s hard not to think of Futurama when you hear Shipping Store Simulator 2037’s premise: a futuristic shipping service with robots that plans to use a rocket ship to make intergalactic deliveries sounds suspiciously like Planet Express after all. Unfortunately, Bender, Fry and Leela are nowhere to be seen: 2037 may just be a little early for them. Instead of a legally distinct Futurama clone, SSS2037 delivers something entirely else: a fresh take on a stale gameplay formula.
Story
Set in the distant future of the year 2037, SSS2037 sees you take ownership of Rocket Post, a run-down shipping office. Your business isn’t the only shipping service in town though, and you’ll have to compete with a corporate behemoth named QuickBox. Can your budding delivery service carve out its fair market share, and perhaps even become the company that makes the first-ever space delivery? This premise forms the backbone of SSS2037’s campaign, but the narrative doesn’t end there. There are several local storylines, including interpersonal neighbourhood drama, town anniversaries, and even a secret underground bunker beneath the warehouse… that used to belong to your father. We were pleasantly surprised that there is more depth to SSS2037’s narrative than the typical invest-earn-expand cycle we’ve come to expect from sim games like this.
Graphics
Both the Rocket Post shipping office and the surrounding town of Cranelock are brought to life with a stylized cartoon aesthetic. Developer Playstrom put a lot of emphasis on worldbuilding, with a fully realized environment that goes far beyond the inside of your store and warehouse. You can explore the city streets and even the town’s sewer system. The inhabitants of Cranelock, both humans and robots, feature distinct character designs and are convincingly animated. It’s clear that a lot of care went into making SSS2037 look good, which is why it pains us to point out that some of the game’s assets, like in-game box art and character portraits, make use of AI-generated assets. This undermined the game’s visual appeal and left a sour taste in our mouth. Visual performance also suffered from some rough edges, including an erratic frame rate and noticeable pop-in.
Sound
Environmental audio is another important factor when it comes to making Cranelock feel alive. The ambience adds to the game’s atmosphere, whether it’s a dog barking in the background or the loud humming of car engines. We’d go as far as to say that SSS2037’s ambience is the strongest element of the game’s soundscape, as voice acting is absent and the game’s music comes across as generic elevator music at best.
Gameplay
You’d be forgiven for thinking that SSS2037 is just the latest in the list of ‘generic’ shop simulators that have been popping up on Steam over the last couple of years. For the most part, the game follows the same template as Supermarket Simulator, Gacha Capsule Shop Simulator, or Exotica 2. At 9:00 a.m., you open the doors of Rocket Post. Your work day then consists of receiving and unloading inventory supplies from delivery vans, labeling packages, stocking shelves, and scanning and fulfilling customer orders. Things get more interesting at night though. Once the clock hits 9:00 p.m., you’ll not only manage store upgrades, but you’ll also engage in black market deliveries using vans, hack QuickBox’s billboards, and repair broken robots. The darn things have a tendency to break down or even catch on fire if you push them too hard, you see.
That brings us to the most prominent of SSS2037’s unique features: those same robots. You’ll eventually transition from manual labour to automation by purchasing and deploying different types of robots. Early on, SSS2037’s gameplay suffers from feeling very repetitive and tedious, but as you invest in your robotic workforce, your freedom opens up exponentially. Pretty much every task in the game can be automated, whether it’s customer service, working the register, labeling boxes, cleaning, and delivery (via drones, of course). The more you automate, the more time you can spend on your less legal activities and inch ever closer to finding out the truth behind your old man’s secret bunker. SSS2037’s hacking activities require you to bypass computer passwords and hack security systems by solving puzzles, adding another layer of depth and a fun twist to a core formula that has grown a bit stale otherwise.
Because of that narrative structure, SSS2037 is a lot shorter than other entries in the genre though. Completing the narrative campaign took us around 9 hours of playing at a leisurely pace. There is some replayability here, mind you, but unless you’re a completionist or achievement chaser, that 9-hour window is a good benchmark for what to expect. The €20.49 price tag puts SSS2037 slightly above its plethora of competitors in the shop sim genre, but both its mechanics and its narrative content are fleshed out enough to make the game stand out and warrant that price tag.
Conclusion
We initially expected Shipping Store Simulator 2037 to be just another store simulator, but the game defied our expectations. The core experience remains familiar, but the introduction of an expanded story and extensive automation mechanics elevate the overall experience. Admittedly, there are some rough edges here and there, like a tedious early game, visual hiccups, and AI-generated assets. As a whole, though, SSS2037 is well worth checking out if you enjoy the idea of shop simulators but feel like the genre has grown stale in recent months.
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