Tattoo Shop Simulator

Tattoo Shop Simulator comes from Old Stuff Studio and is published by RockGame S.A. You rent a small shop with nearly your last money, then build it into the biggest tattoo brand in town. It spent time in Early Access and left it on September 23 with two player-requested additions: adoptable dogs you can feed and walk, and graffiti across the city.

One thing before the details. I haven’t found a single outlet review of this game, and the Steam sample is 27 reviews. Nothing below comes from hours of play. It is built from the store page, the studio’s announcements and patch coverage, and the numbers.

What sets it apart

Most shop sims are stock, shelve, scan, repeat. This one puts the craft in your hands. A customer arrives with a request, you pick a design, and you perform the tattoo or piercing yourself, with errors lowering satisfaction. Machines come in tiers, ink stocks need managing, and equipment has to be kept in working order. A custom tattoo system, added during Early Access from player feedback, means you can make designs rather than choose from a fixed list. Coverage of the game keeps coming back to this: it feels more like practising a trade than buying upgrades and waiting for money.

Beyond the chair

The shop is meant to be a starting point. You can hire employees with different skills, buy cafes, pizzerias and hotels for passive income, acquire hotdog and ice-cream licenses, and roam the city on a motorcycle. Thugs will try to scare off customers and you can chase them off with a bat. Weather, city events and letters from the municipality shift your fortunes, and a home life with pets and a day-night cycle gives you somewhere to go when the shop closes. The studio’s own framing is that the Early Access period was for balancing the economy, tuning the tattoo mechanics and fixing bugs, which are exactly the things that matter most in a game like this.

What I can’t tell you yet

The early public conversation about the game centers on one question: do the properties, staff and city events add real depth, or do they surround a loop that rests on one activity? I can’t answer that from the outside, and nobody I could find has yet. The Steam score is Mostly Positive at 77%, which implies a real share of players aren’t satisfied, but with only 27 reviews I’d be inventing the reasons. Both the free demo (83% positive) and the free Prologue (86% positive) scored a little higher, which is a gentle sign that the first hours land better than the full scope.

One small note: the developers disclose that AI was used only for the 2D store capsule art.

Verdict

At $12.99 with a free Prologue and a free demo, the financial risk is low, and the hands-on tattooing is a better hook than most shop sims offer. But there is no independent critical read yet, and the Steam sample is too small to lean on. My advice is to try the free Prologue first and wait for a few more weeks of reviews before paying, unless you already know you love this genre.