I got myself into a mode when the latest wave of sim games arrived and flooded me with enticement for relatively fresh concept ideas (Gas Station Sim, Train Station Renovation etc). Not only that, thanks to the growing trend of interfaces being made more accessible, the growing goals being made the carrot on the stick and modern engines being furthermore optimized, the simulation genre seems to be growing further beyond the niched obscurity and earning its place once more alongside other genres on the forefront.
One of those examples of such genre is this game, where you manage and run a PC workshop that offers services for computer owners, dealing with both hardware and software issues. When you come in, the shop has had poor service reputation and it's up to you save it and take it to a new path of glory. You start with small orders, like cleaning, deleting viruses and replacing PC parts, only to step up with new kinds of tasks including upgrading, overclocking and building a new PC from scratch. You can even use your spare budget to enhance your shop with new features for convenience, automatizing certain mundane tasks.
I wasn't as much a sim fan before but this is one of those games that made me believe how engaging, educational and even fun they can be. Even as I have fiddled with my own PC IRL by replacing and upgrading parts, there's something new I could take away from the game since they bring PC functions, technical specifications and performances to actual references like the brands, the 3DMark scores and comparisons. And the devs keep the game up-to-date with the new parts coming into existence.
Ultimately, I did find this game addictive for the first few hours but as the variety of tasks grows, it also gets heavier and the initial sense of progress already started to wear down. Although the IT support game mode made for a good change of tasks, it ended up the same and I felt after nearly a dozen hours that I can't look forward to pick this up again. Maybe it's because my interest lies somewhere else deeper than the working with computers, like being content with just the 101 class.
To summarize things, PC Building Simulator undeniably lives up to its genre's namesake, keeping itself faithful to real-world in terms of PC parts and functions as a reference. I suppose it will cater to the PC nerds, novice or not, that could see themselves sitting with this for quite a long time, especially with the constant updates being made to catch up with new brand part releases. However, the interest might wear down when the flow wears down due to increasingly heavier and more complicated tasks coming in time. For those who are on the fence, might want to test it and pick it up on a sale and wait with buying the DLC's.
