Pocket Mart

Prospectus

Pocket Mart is a 3D shop-management game set in a small open town. You start with one shelf of tomatoes and a tiny corner shop: carry stock from your warehouse to the shelves, ring customers up at the register, collect your cash, and reinvest it in upgrades, new products and staff. Grow from a single produce corner into a three-room market selling ten products, from fruit and dairy to bread and household goods. When the warehouse runs low, order stock by phone or jump in your car and drive across town to the farm market and the mall for cheaper boxes. The town is fully drivable, with traffic, pedestrians, a petrol station, a car showroom with four cars to buy, a bank that pays interest on your savings, and your home, where you can sleep through the night. Hold the handbrake to drift around corners and chase a high score. A full day-and-night cycle, impatient customers who comment on empty shelves and slow queues, hireable cashiers, stockers and cleaners, achievements and ever-growing goals keep the shop busy.

How it plays

Goal: stock your shelves, serve customers, collect the cash and grow your shop until every room and all ten products are unlocked. Move with WASD or the arrow keys, or drag anywhere on the screen on a phone. Stand in a marked circle to work automatically: collect goods in the warehouse, stock shelves, run the register and pick up cash. Tap the button that appears at pads and desks to buy shelves, rooms, upgrades and staff. Tap Order to phone in more stock, or walk to your car, press Drive, and visit the Farm market and Mega Mall for cheaper boxes, then park in the delivery bay to unload. While driving, use W/S or drag up and down for gas and brake, A/D or drag sideways to steer, hold Space or the DRIFT button to slide, and press C or View to change camera. Esc or the pause button opens the menu.

Opening an account with this game takes one press: Open the holding, above, and it loads on this page itself — nothing downloads and no form stands between you and the first decision. It is drawn for a flexible screen and takes its instructions from mouse, keyboard or touch, as the game prefers. It adjusts itself to upright and wide screens alike, so phone, tablet and desktop all present it properly. If a fullscreen control is offered, take it — a growing enterprise deserves the whole desk.

Analyst's notes for simulation holdings

• Learn the loop before optimising it. Every simulation is a circle — earn, spend, expand, earn more — and the players who last are the ones who found the circle's slow point early.
• Watch one full cycle without touching anything. A simulation confesses its priorities when left alone: whatever runs out first is what the designer wants you managing.
• Small inefficiencies compound faster than big ones. A route that wastes ten seconds every cycle costs more than a disaster that happens once, so audit the routine before the dramatic.

Pocket Mart — questions from the readership

What does it cost to open Pocket Mart?

Nothing, at any point. The holding is free from the first click to the last upgrade — no account to open, no download to wait for, no paywall filed anywhere in its pages. The advertising around this page is what pays the bookkeeping.

What kind of game is Pocket Mart, exactly?

We file it on the Simulation shelf of the ledger. It is a browser game through and through — the prospectus above is the publisher's own summary of what the game asks of you and what it gives back.

Can I play Pocket Mart on a phone or tablet?

Yes — it runs in the browser on phones and tablets just as it does on a computer. It adjusts itself to upright and wide screens alike, so phone, tablet and desktop all present it properly.

Is there anything to download or install first?

Nothing at all. Pocket Mart is an HTML5 game: press the open button and it loads on this very page, and closing the tab leaves nothing behind on your device.

Closing entry

Finished the audit, or still mid-season? The full Simulation shelf is one click away — The ledger's main hall: 302 simulations of everything from bus routes to burger counters to entire small lives. If it can be run, staffed, watered or worried over, somebody has simulated it and filed it here.