New Steam game lets you create a virtual man cave with pretend physical games

If you miss the days of boxes and manuals, then a new game that lets you pretend to own them for your entire Steam collection is coming soon.

As much as some people continue to tout their love of physical media, the sad reality is that it’s becoming increasingly niche, with the majority of gamers opting to purchase their games digitally.

Just last month, it was reported that physical games sales had hit a new low in the US and GAME, once the go-to high street retailer for physical games, has gone into administration and shut all its dedicated stores.

Physical PC games haven’t been a thing for decades, with storefronts like Steam allowing you to more conveniently put together a digital library… which is why one team has created a new game that allows you to pretend to own a physical collection.

Titled Boxroom, it is the first game by new UK developer Nested Loop Studios, which describes itself as being ‘dedicated to small games with simple rules that spiral into unexpected depth.’

Officially, Boxroom is labelled as a design/decorator sim, though Nested Loop has openly referred to it as ‘shelf porn.’ Based on our first impressions, we’d deem it a man cave simulator as it involves setting up and designing your own dedicated gamer space.

What’s particularly neat about Boxroom is that it draws from your own Steam library and fills your shelves with physical recreations of your games, with each one getting their own chunky box and a floppy disk on the inside.

You can even boot up your games through Boxroom, while the trailer shows you can set up posters and even bed covers that feature cover art from Steam games like Pacific Drive and Balatro.

‘If you miss the era of boxes, instruction manuals and burying your nose in a freshly bought game box for that euphoric plasticky hit, then I hope this scratches an itch,’ says Nested Loop director James Biddulph.

It’s not exactly the perfect replacement for those yearning for the old days and it’s probably not as effective if you have a very small Steam library, but Boxroom has clearly resonated with a lot of people as it has already been wishlisted 10,000 times.

A free demo no doubt helped and the plan is to launch Boxroom later this year via early access, so the development team can build the game based on player feedback.

‘Boxroom has been conceived and developed with the player – a player just like you, in fact – in mind. The trouble is, we don’t know what’s in your mind, and what you might want (or expect) of a game about defining your game collection in your way. It’s a very personal thing,’ reads the game’s Steam page.

‘And so early access allows us to develop the game in the open, turning on new features and addressing specific requests as they bubble up from the community.’

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