There seems to be a simulator for just about anything these days. Truck driver, train conductor, farmer, chef, game dev - the list goes on. Shop management sims aren't a new concept - my mind goes back to the days of Flash and educational browser games about managing a lemonade stand - but Sticky Business manages to carve out a unique space for itself within the genre. I've sunk about 18 hours into the sticker Etsy store management sim since it came out, so let's talk about it.
The Gameplay
Sticky Business has a simple enough loop. You have a limited amount of time in every day, determined by a difficulty setting, during which you need to package and ship orders on time, create new stickers for your shop, and make sure your stock is keeping up with demand. It's a fairly forgiving loop, with limited room for less than purposeful failure and only very minor punishment for those small slip-ups. From orders, you earn money and hearts. Money gets used to buy some upgrades and print more stickers. Hearts, which you earn by leveling up sticker assets by selling stickers that use them, get used to purchase other upgrades like more assets. There isn't much strategy to it either. Including freebies like candy or extra stickers will add bonuses to your sticker level-ups. Beyond that, you don't have to think too much about what you're doing.
As you ship orders, specific types of stickers will attract special customers who'll unravel a short story through their order notes. All simple things - two of your customers bonding over your stickers and falling for each other, someone ordering stickers to decorate their cast while recovering from a broken leg - but sweet and involved enough for what the game is.
Other than that, Sticky Business is an exercise in creative repetition. You aren't necessarily doing the same tasks over and over again, but you'll fall into a rhythm that feels a little monotonous, which could be a positive or a negative depending on the person.
The Pros
The assets are all adorable, and the whole game is very cheery and relaxing. I've found myself opening it to play just for twenty, thirty minutes as a de-stresser after work or even just a more intense game. For me, the monotony was a positive. I'm attracted to games where the point is to complete a set of simple tasks repeatedly, because they serve as something to do with my hands while listening to an audiobook, talking with friends, so on and so forth. The rhythm of it is meditative and soothing.
And, while this won't be something everyone seeks out, I found my own kind of fun in doing a bit of metagaming. How many assets can I fit on one sticker while keeping it compact enough to print at a reasonable rate and maximize leveling those assets up? Sticker freebies generate the same bonus whether they're huge or tiny - how many tiny, cheap stickers can I print on one sheet to maximize my bonuses while spending next to nothing? There is extra fun to be made in manipulating the mechanics to their most extreme ends.
The Cons
Let's continue the thought here and say, yeah, admittedly metagaming probably kind of goes against the sprit of the sweet sticker making sim. But it's management game brain, and it's fun for me. Here's the catch and why this point bridges the pros and the cons - it feels necessary in Sticky Business to enjoy it for longer than half hour sessions. Certainly there are players for whom playing the game as seemingly intended is going to be more than enough, but for me, Sticky Business is missing any element of challenge.
It's just too hard to fail. That doesn't have to be a negative! In a game like this, there should be a mode - probably the main mode, even - that doesn't punish you harshly or demand too much. But to extend the lifespan of the game, I need to find that challenge somewhere. When I make a silly mistake - wasting all of my money buying lollipops and not being able to afford to print stickers, leaving stickers out of people's orders - I want to feel some kind of sting from that. I kept finding myself in want of a store rating. Let people leave negative reviews if their orders are late or missing stickers. Give me the opportunity to make nice with dissatisfied customers by correcting their orders. Let me build up a reputation that earns me more customers instead of just giving me a random number every day. I needed there to be some sense of challenge and progression beyond just gaining access to new assets and cosmetics, because otherwise, what point is there in playing beyond the first week or two?
There were other, smaller things that bothered me. Quirks with the sticker creator, for example - a masking option would go an incredibly long way towards making unique stickers. Also, the customer stories. They were sweet and all, but it felt kind of weird to have people saying how life-changingly inspired they were by the creativity on display in my shop only for them to disappear off the face of the Earth when they'd finished their little story arc. I don't need a lot, but seeing their faces pop up on even text-less orders randomly would go a long way.
TL;DR
Sticky Business is exactly what it promises to be, but it doesn't go much beyond that. At $9.99, I think the value proposition is reasonable, and if you're someone who's looking for a simple, low-pressure, aesthetically pleasing and creative management sim, I can recommend you pick it up. If you're wanting anything more complex or story-driven, I'd recommend you wait for a sale.
Final Score: 4/5 Metagamed Sticker Sheets