Nothing beats putting all my little stuff on my many little shelves in a super cozy shop sim like Thrifty Business

Thrifty Business - A character celebrates buying a plate from a shelf full of secondhand items. — (Image credit: Spellgarden Games)

Man I just love a game where I move all my little stuff around on my little shelves. I adored the tactile fiddling about in Potion Craft and sorting my store shelves in Tiny Bookshop—though I did skip Unpacking for some reason—and upcoming funky shop sim Thrifty Business is right at the pinnacle of that compulsive fussing-with-stuff fascination. You don't have to wait for next week's Steam Next Fest because the demo is already live for you to try right now.

The folks behind the cute tat design sim Sticky Business are calling their next brightly colored cozy game a "laid-back management sim" because it really is almost entirely about the pixel pushing. Spellgarden Games says there's no "stressful min-maxing" for the best profit, haggling minigame, or rushing to serve customers before they leave in a huff. It's all about curating your stuff, buying new display shelves, and occasionally helping out your regular customers by stocking an item they're looking for or hosting community events.

It's like Tiny Bookshop in that you're running a shop by purchasing mystery boxes of used stuff to sell, and like Unpacking in that all those bobbles are yours to puzzle over placing exactly where you want. Items have lots of different tags like "kitchen" or "toy" for their purpose, "vintage" or "y2k" for their style, and even tags for colors, giving you a rating for your store's level of organization if things are grouped sensibly.

I spent my few days in the demo nudging around the perfect "vintage kitchen ceramics" shelf and deciding if my growing collection of "y2k" backpacks and pouches should get shelved beside the VHS player or with the other handbags. Do people looking for witchy crystal decorations also want vintage candlesticks? As Spellgarden says, I may be putting more thought in here than Thrifty Business actually demands, but I can't stop myself when my Sims 4 spidey sense for cluttering keeps going off. The only stressful part of Thrifty Business for me is going to be trying to make my shop look as charmingly on-theme as the official screenshots.

The current demo has just a few in-game days to play and a couple events to plan like a grand opening and a queer dating night, but there are already heaps of little items to unbox and sort onto my many shelves.

Coming up next, Spellgarden says, are things like character customization—I know you're all going to ask about that—more stories and events, a photo mode, interactable objects, and more. There's no specific release date for Thrifty Business just yet, but it's planning to launch sometime in 2026.

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She joined the PCG staff in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.

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