Storage Hunter Simulator is a single player — or co-operative — game in which you attend various auctions out in the world to find valuables. You then sell these to make as much money as possible. The tutorial has you slowly attending these auctions in the hope to set you up with a pawn shop of your own, so you can then start to sell the items for a bit more profit.
In Storage Hunter Simulator you really are trying to squeeze the most out of everything, I actually struggled at the beginning with trying to make profit from the auctions as the NPCs seem to raise the price to the point where you about break even when you do win — making it quite difficult to get yourself established.
The auctions system is quite basic, in the sense that you bid against your friends or other NPCs to try and pull together and get the best deal on many different types of lots. Anything from garages in the local town to junkyards miles down the road are free to attend with some items racking up a hefty sum to purchase.
You can find lots of items out and about in the world to give yourself some pure profit though, outside of auctions: Whether it be a pair of binoculars someone seems to have left in the park through to the literal Ark of the Covenant — nothing will be spared in your pursuit of good business.
The pawn shop that you set up will have a number of upgrades available which are quite expensive when you first start out but once you’re fully rolling you can quite easily drop off all of your items and head straight back out while your employees do all the heavy lifting and pop the items on the shelves.
Speaking of heavy lifting, you will be doing a lot of it through the transportation system. The items that are balanced on your truck have an exaggerated physics system, so you may or may not have a whale of a time watching your Tower of Pisa topple over after as you try to haul your auction winnings back.
You can also gain access to blind auctions giving you the ability to buy lots without even looking at them which has a much higher risk/reward factor, as you have absolutely no idea what you’ll be getting. As the game is primarily a co-operative experience, most of the competition between yourselves seems to be just who can get the better deal — however, money is separated between characters giving you each the freedom to buy what you want.
You can also buy many different tools to help you with the items that you get from the auctions. Some of these tools might help you verify what an item is or open up a locked crate to gain access to some other bits stashed inside. Alternatively you might just want to invest in something to fix your items up, to squeeze a few extra dollars out of them — it’s entirely up to you.
You can also buy new cosmetics and vehicles, the vehicles seem to be the go to item to make your transporting needs that much easier. With the sheer amount of items you get from some of the auctions it can take several trips to-and-from some locations just to get the items sold. Some of the shops that you sell to have a closing time as well so it’s just a matter of getting the items to the store before it closes otherwise it can despawn leaving you heavily in debt
The map does also show a carnival up to the north, this lets you win tickets to be spent on more cosmetics and vehicles. Most of the vehicles seem a bit novelty, like a school bus, but if you can make it work then so be it. The games themselves seem to universally cost $250 which is quite expensive and getting the tickets can be a bit of a slog so it’s not particularly necessary to do.
Scattered throughout the various towns you can find a number of professionals who can all help you with identifying and opening items if you lack the tools to do it. This however comes with not only a fee but a duration meaning you could be left for several in-game hours without your items and without money. This is especially annoying when you have a locked box opened, only to then have a number of items needing appraisal afterwards.
Storage Hunter Simulator is surprisingly addictive and will leave you wanting to keep playing it but after you’ve got your first shop established it is very much rinse and repeat until you reach some of the higher levels for areas in the game which will either have you fully invested or a bit bored, it entirely depends on what how far you want to go with it.
If you would like to try Storage Hunter yourself you can find it on PC on the Steam store.
