Superstore 3000 Review

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Superstore 3000 Review

The Cardboard-Based Characteristics

The Shopping Center…… of the Future!

How often have you said “I need to get my one-eyed alien to the gym?” Or “I need to get my cat to the food court?” Well, over the last few days, I have often said gibberish like this. Superstore 3000 is a game about building a shopping mall (or shopping centre where I am from) to try and fulfil certain requirements and get your lovely little shoppers where they need to be. Bless em! Welcome to the Superstore 3000 review!

At its heart, Superstore 3000 is a tile-placement game with pattern-based objectives and the usual adjacency stuff. Start small and build a bigger and bigger shopping centre, build the same colour shops near each other and close to the right shoppers and you will earn those juicy, juicy points. On top of that, you may be able to build attractions like ghost houses or massive fish bowls that loom over your space-based money making mega-structure.

The Setup

Setup is quite brisk. Give everyone an entrance, a ruler to see how tall your building is, a personal objective with an attraction and a few space-dollars. Create the included shop dispenser, a pile of shared attractions and goals. Along with this, there are a few point balloons to place off to the side and a few docks each player can earn.

Setup is fast, easy and lets you jump straight into designing the shopping centre of your dreams. Before you know it, your puzzling over what shop to put where, what your customers want and how to get your hands on the attraction with the dinosaur.

Simple Turns

Your turn in Superstore 3000 is simple. Build something like a new shop or attraction, or take some space-cash. The reason you would take space-cash is that the dispenser is made up of 2 columns, each with 4 shops or entrances in a piece. The bottom one of each column is free but each one above that costs an increasing amount of space-dollar. So sometimes you have to take cash instead. To take cash you flip the bottom shop over to its space-monies side and then take another space-dollar from the bank for every shop in the same column of the same colour. Sometimes if things just line up right, it’s worth taking a pile of cash anyway.

What are you trying to do with all this intergalactic construction? Well, your first tile in your shopping centre is an entrance. As soon as you place the tile, you place upon it 3 lovely little see-through plastic Meeples. (More on those later) These Meeples all have a requirement, you know the stuff, Barry wants an ice cream parlour, Mary wants a new dress, that sort of jazz. Once a tile with the corresponding requirement is at the most, 3 tiles away. The Meeple can be moved there and lie down. Let’s face it, after a long day shopping, we all need a lie down. Hahahaha.

Sweet, Sweet Points

At the end of the game, the person with the most satisfied customers gets points, the player with the biggest group of each type of shop will get points and players will also get points for their attractions. Attractions, as I stated earlier, are large tiles that have groovy things in them like dinosaurs and ghost trains. These tiles, to be built, will need to have their requirements met. These requirements are randomized at the start of the game and give all the players something else to concentrate on. You know the stuff, a row with 3 different colour shops, that kind of pattern-based shenanigans.

Along with this, players can also build docks, these widen your shopping centre and give you a bit more freedom. Not only that, but they provide points and if you pick the correct one, a little scoring bonus for certain things. Even though turns are quite simple in Superstore 3000, there are a few things to juggle and several things for you to try and achieve. You can’t do everything, just don’t do what some people do (definitely not me) and try to do everything and achieve nothing, it’s a fool’s errand. Be malleable and have a sort of goal in mind. It will serve you well.

Components and See-Through Meeples

Those Meeples, wow, I think they are lovely. They are small, see-through plastic with full colour cartoons of shoppers on. Everything from one-eyed green aliens and cats to humanoids and generic shoppers. They did not have to be as nice as they are but they are the standout component for sure. Along with that, all the shops, attractions and tiles are bold, bright and very pleasing to look at. When your shopping centre is built, it always looks lovely, especially with all the see-through shoppers in there.

Everything in the box works well, serves a purpose, and as I said, I love it in a board game where I can look at the thing you have built and be proud. Your Superstore always looks the part, especially if you get a few of the massive attractions, they make it pop off the table massively.

In Conclusion

I will be honest with you here, I did not expect much from Superstore 3000. I expected another drab tile placement game. Luckily, I enjoyed it a lot more than that. It helps I live with someone who loves these games but I will admit, I will be holding on to this one, at least for the foreseeable future. It has that nice blend of quick, easy turns mixed with juicy decisions and multiple goals to aim for. As for those Meeples, ‘chefs kiss’ they are delightful.

If you like placement games that have a puzzle sort of feeling, you will enjoy this one. If you have a family or people getting into games, it’s also a good choice. It’s certainly something we enjoy in our house. Right, I am off to see if I can build a shop so Steve the alien can get his workout done. See you next time intergalactic shoppers!