In March 2025, two-person Canadian developer Blood Pact Studios released Bonesaw, a turn-based strategy game about beating the devil at gambling by cutting off all of his fingers. This strategy has always worked for me in poker as well; the other players never see it coming and struggle to play afterward. Bonesaw reviewed well on Steam but didn't exactly explode. For its next game, Blood Pact dipped into the shopkeeper sim space that has very much exploded on Steam in the past few years, and now it's got a solid-gold hit on its hands: Retro Rewind - Video Store Simulator.
The aptly named nostalgia trip sends you back to the '90s to run a Blockbuster-esque video store in "the golden ages of video rentals," as Blood Pact puts it. The bones of the shopkeeper sims are all here: manage inventory, upgrade your facilities, hire staff, and interact with customers.
But the '90s vibe and VHS themes bring some spice and character: recommend movies based on the season, charge late fees, heap popcorn into buckets, and decorate your shop with neon lights and utterly hideous carpet that honestly looked pretty good at the time.
There's a clever collectible aspect to the game, too. "Fill your shelves with thousands of unique VHS tapes, each with their own title, genre and hand-drawn cover art!" Blood Pact says. Lots of in-game movies clearly parody real films, and "Every movie can be ordered on your PC with a unique code that you can share with your friends!"
Clearly, Retro Rewind has resonated. On March 21, five days after launch, Blood Pact announced that it had sold 100,000 copies. At the time, the game would've had around 1,350 Steam user reviews. It now has over 4,250 Steam reviews averaging 95% positive, and SteamDB's sales estimates put the game closer to 150,000 or even 200,000 copies sold nowadays.
"The positivity surrounding the game has truly blown us away," Blood Pact said in a March 21 update. "Many of you already know this, but we’re just two developers at Blood Pact Studios. We’ve spent nearly two years working on this project, and your incredible support has made our dream a reality."
"All upcoming updates" will be completely free, the devs say, with a roadmap covering things like additional shop storage, more supported languages, a VHS repair station (ready your tape rewinding finger), and space for community-voted features. A "helpful" user review from user KiyoKitsune offers one modest suggestion that I, having worked retail for just a few months in college, can get behind: "We need an option to beat customers to death who refuse to pay fines and throw the vhs tapes on the floor, otherwise [it's a] good game."
