The Walking Trade is out today on XBOX Series X|S. It’s a store management game set in a zombie apocalypse: you stock the shelves, set your prices, and serve the survivors who come through the door, then pick up a weapon when zombies raid the place. I made it on my own, and I made it without ever playing a shop simulator.

I grew up on tycoon games in the early 2000s. RollerCoaster Tycoon and The Sims were my favorites, and what stayed with me was the first time I played each of them without cheat codes (sacrilegious, I know). With no shortcut to easy money, both games gave me the feeling of starting from the bottom and building something from nothing. I wanted The Walking Trade to give you that same feeling.

Years later, I watched shop simulators take off. Traditional tycoon games work at the macro scale, while shop simulators stay with the day-to-day: the shelf that needs restocking, the customer waiting to pay. That depth intrigued me. But they are, by design, incredibly chill experiences, and the game I wanted to play had risk and danger in it. So instead of playing them, I built the shop simulator I’d want to play.

I hadn’t seen a shop simulator really add combat, and a post-apocalyptic world seemed like the perfect way to marry the two mechanically. A shop full of supplies is exactly the kind of place that needs defending.

In The Walking Trade , you design the layout of your store, decide what goes on which shelf, and choose what to charge.

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