Superstore 3000 Board Game Review

Superstore 3000 is an easy to learn tile laying game for 1-4 players. Although we said “easy to learn” that doesn’t mean the strategy of the game is easy to master. As you place down stores into your mall and attempt to satisfy customers, you’ll want to keep your eyes on those attraction tiles and docking bays as well. What you build, and when you build it, will be the deciding factor in how well you perform by the end. While it’s fun to build things, does this game give you positive feelings when you are done? Let’s take a look!

Whatever you decide to build in Superstore 3000, it’s going to be a bit wacky and odd. And that’s the way the design team likes it. At its core, Superstore 3000 is really a simple tile laying game with only two available actions each turn: build something or take money. When building, you have the option to take tiles from the central dispensary board and pay the associated cost (if any) to the bank, and play that tile in your mall.

Alternatively, you can use the build action to build your own personal attraction within your mall, or one of the common attractions, if you meet the build requirements of course. If you don’t want to build, or you need funds to purchase things later in the game, you can always take money. You’ll take the lowest tile of one of the two tracks in the dispensary and flip it over to its money side – then, for each matching coloured tile in the column you will take an additional money from the bank, if there is any.

The game really is that simple to play, but there is a lot to think about. First, your mall will grow taller over time, but there are a few things that will impact HOW you build your mall. First, you only have access to two columns when the game first starts, so your choice of where you can build is pretty minimal. It’s not until you get docking bays for your first floor, or cool attractions, that you’ll get more variety in your buildingable areas.

The second thing to consider is where you place shops. See, when you build a mall entrance into your mall, you will place 2 customers on it. Those customers want to get to specific stores (either greed, blue or yellow, and then 1-3 types for each). A customer can only move three times before it lands in the desired shop – each store is one movement, which means deciding which tiles to take, and where to place them, is key to satisfying customers.

You ALSO need to consider how well you can group together different colours of stores. There are bonus points awarded to the person who can have large groupings of stores, with tie breakers taking into account the number of satisfied customers in those groupings.

None of what we have said so far takes into account the really cool attractions you can build into your mall. They are much harder to place, but will earn you straight victory points, and open up new areas and avenues for your stores and customers.

Attractions DO NOT count towards the 3 shop limit of movement, so you can quickly zip a customer around your mall through these large attractions and get them to a shop they want to be in. Again, some hefty strategy here. Sure, you can just build the attractions to earn the big points for the end of the game, but if you can utilize their large space coverage to create some “shortcuts” for customers who might not otherwise reach a shop, that’s huge too.

I’d argue there is a decent amount of strategy here for longtime board game players, but not so much that a newer individual to the hobby wouldn’t be able to do well. There is a really fantastic tile placement game here for those that love that genre of games, and I think the great production helps elevate the experience just a bit more. Space Cowboys titles can be found relatively inexpensively at most local game stores, so this might be a great game to add to your collection!