My very patient customers were obsessed with cooking oil in this chill supermarket management Steam Next Fest demo

Over the years, simulation games have given us a taste of what it would be like to run hospitals, theme parks, zoos, and even whole cities, trying to balance the books while also making sure everyone stays happy. This new offering from Nokta Games takes that idea and gives it an all-new and more down-to-earth setting: a supermarket.

The game, aptly named Supermarket Simulator, tasks you with overseeing every aspect of the store. You decide what products to order, and when they arrive, you stack them on shelves and, crucially, decide how much you're going to charge for them. Much like in the real world, market prices fluctuate, so it pays to be savvy about when you choose to stock up – thankfully, nothing has a sell-buy date - and how you set your prices. If they're too high, your patrons will go elsewhere for their groceries, but set them too low, and you'll soon see those debts start to mount, and before you know it, you've got the shady group you got the loan to set up shop from knocking on your door.

The demo starts you off at the very beginning of your journey with a small space, a few empty shelves, and the ability to order only the basic of foodstuffs; I'm talking eggs, cereal, bread, flour, pasta, and cooking oil – which for reasons unknown I simply couldn't keep in stock. Perhaps my valued customers just really like including it in dishes, or maybe there's a rumor going around this virtual world that bathing in it is the key to eternal youth. Who knows, but whatever the reason, that stuff was flying off the shelves.

Naturally, a big part of running a store is serving customers, and you have to manually ring their purchases up at the checkout and count out the right change. Trying to keep on top of serving customers while at the same time keeping the store shelves stocked is a bit of a balancing act; get too focused on checkout duties, and pretty soon, you'll be looking at empty shelves but getting too preoccupied with stock ordering, pricing, and displays