--- title: Solo Developer on Creating a Simulation Game About a... description: Sia Ding Shen, a solo developer from Malaysia, shares the development journey behind TCG Card Shop Simulator. The game centers on managing a trading card game... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/solo-developer-on-creating-a-simulation-game-about-a-local-game-store-lcuiynav2 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Solo Developer on Creating a Simulation Game About a Local Game Store | daily.dev og:description: Sia Ding Shen, a solo developer from Malaysia, shares the development journey behind TCG Card Shop Simulator. The game centers on managing a trading card game... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/solo-developer-on-creating-a-simulation-game-about-a-local-game-store-lcuiynav2 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/LCUiynav2.png og:image:alt: Solo Developer on Creating a Simulation Game About a Local Game Store og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Solo Developer on Creating a Simulation Game About a Local Game Store **[80 LEVEL](https://daily.dev/sources/80lv)** · 5 min read · 11 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Sia Ding Shen, a solo developer from Malaysia, shares the development journey behind TCG Card Shop Simulator. The game centers on managing a trading card game shop, opening card packs, and collecting cards, drawing inspiration from Recettear, Supermarket Simulator, and real-life TCGs like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh. Built in Unity, the developer relied heavily on Asset Store tools like I2 Localization and A* Pathfinding Pro to save time as a solo dev. Key technical challenges included performance optimization as shops grew larger, requiring ongoing profiling and culling work. Porting to multiple platforms was outsourced to General Arcade. Marketing relied primarily on Reddit and organic YouTuber/streamer pickup. The game is on track to exit Early Access in Fall with a playable TCG mode. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@macb** · 0 upvotes > steam already has a TCG simulator --- Tags: [#performance](https://daily.dev/tags/performance), [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#unity](https://daily.dev/tags/unity) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/solo-developer-on-creating-a-simulation-game-about-a-local-game-store-lcuiynav2) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Solo Developer on Creating a Simulation Game About a Local Game Store","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/solo-developer-on-creating-a-simulation-game-about-a-local-game-store-lcuiynav2","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/solo-developer-on-creating-a-simulation-game-about-a-local-game-store-lcuiynav2"},"datePublished":"2026-07-06T18:28:00.888Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:12:16.283Z","description":"Sia Ding Shen, a solo developer from Malaysia, shares the development journey behind TCG Card Shop Simulator. 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