Cart Life is a “retail simulator” about three everyday people trying to make it as street vendors: a Ukrainian immigrant recently arrived in the US, a divorced mother trying to maintain custody of her daughter, and a dreamer who never quite manages to make ends meet.

You guide each of these characters through the early days of their new ventures selling newspapers, coffee, and bagels—in some ways it’s like that old game Lemonade Stand, on a larger scale. Guide each of these characters through the early days of their new ventures selling newspapers, coffee, and bagels. Secure the necessary permits and decide where in town to set up shop. Balance your budget between supplies, rent, and your own personal needs. Just as in life, there's no pause button or save game to fall back on -- so make every decision count.

But Cart Life is also a story game, with characters you’ll care about and an open world with tons of little surprises to discover. Oh, and did we mention it has chunky grayscale pixel art?

Cart Life swept the IGF awards in 2013, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, but then the game disappeared.

Now Cart Life's creator, Richard Hofmeier, is partnering with AdHoc Studio -- a company started by the creative leads on Telltale Games series like The Wolf Among Us and Tales from the Borderlands -- to achieve the completion of the game and its interconnecting stories.

There’s a long story here that involves a 4:00 a.m. phone call, a dead-end job, and a trip to San Francisco. 

The short version is that our team was profoundly influenced by Cart Life, and we were alarmed to discover that it was no longer available. For a game regularly included in “best of all time” lists to be relegated to the Internet Archive seemed unjust. So we reached out to Richard and offered to help.

How will the new version of Cart Life be different from the original?

It’s better to ask how the new version will be the same, because the overall experience will be very close to the original. The graphics, story, and premise are more or less untouched. If they have been touched, it’s to improve on something that Richard was unsatisfied with in the original.

Under the hood, though, a lot is different. One big change is that the game has been moved from the freeware Adventure Game Studio engine to Unity. This gives us a lot more flexibility to fix certain issues from the original game, and it enables us to release Cart Life on consoles as well as PC. We’re also tweaking the controls, so gameplay that previously required keyboard input will work on consoles.

Some new content is being added to ensure that each of the playable characters has a proper ending to their story. The order in which you choose to play the three characters’ stories will matter in the new version, too, with each protagonist’s playthrough affecting the other playable characters in subtle ways. A lot of the new content is stuff Richard always wanted in the game, but he was unable to include originally.

Key Features:

• Play three characters’ intertwined stories in any order
• Stock, maintain, and upgrade your cart to increase revenue
• Balance your personal needs against your sales goals
• Travel the city and get to know members of the community
• Manage your time to keep appointments and sell to the most customers

Cart Life is coming to PC in 2023, with consoles still being determining.