PC Building Simulator is, as its name suggests, a game that allows you to build PCs in a virtual world from Claudiu Kiss and The Irregular Corporation, which is exactly what you get in free-build mode. The career mode however is more of a PC repair simulator- you have inherited a repair shop from your uncle who had just retired, and will be tasked with repairing and building PCs for cash. How you spend the cash you earn from the repairs would be up to you, but it is advisable to stay out of the red- even if your bank is generous enough to give you an overdraw limit of $1000, dip below that and they start charging a daily loan interest. Aiding you would be several upgrades that will make your life easier. You also start the game at level 1, with experience coming in as you complete repair and build tasks. Gaining levels would allow you access to better components and better paying jobs.
Starting off as a free proof-of-concept game, the game was later sold on Steam as an early access title. The game is written using the Unity game engine. The game was released with full proof-of-access on Windows, Mac, and Linux in 2018 followed by a port to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in August 2019.
On August 4, 2020, the eSports Expansion was added as paid DLC to provide a second career mode where you play as a tech for one of multiple eSports teams. Your role is to to maintain the gaming machines while juggling side jobs for the players, owners and team sponsors, getting your team in shape for the tournament at the end of each week and influencing the outcome through your skills.
On October 29, 2021, the free IT Expansion Pack was released which expanded the game to include a third career mode where the player now has a job at an IT company. The player must fix multiple PCs, can team up with coworkers for jobs, has a ticketing system for queueing jobs, and sometimes has to travel offsite for a job.
On October 12, 2022 the official sequel PC Building Simulator 2 was released via the Epic Games Store. This game adds dozens more real-life PC products as well as new features like the ability to install and program RGB case lighting and spray paint the PC case different colors, and to install and use thermal control and power management software as well as the ability to customize your shop with custom wallpaper, carpeting, furniture, and posters.
Tropes
- 419 Scam: One quest arc in the first game is written in the style of one, from an alleged African prince's secretary (from the "Royal Duarte Bank") asking you to do jobs for no labor cost (though you will still be reimbursed, at cost, for any parts you used) Ultimately subverted, as if you accept and complete them, you get a third job with $4000 labor cost, and that one does indeed pay out.
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: More fiddly aspects of PC building like cable management are downplayed in favour of the more wide-reaching steps.
- The game really simplifies some of the errors you may encounter while troubleshooting hardware. In real life, troubleshooting hardware isn't always that easy.
- Data backup and data recovery is not even found in the game at all.
- Achievement Mockery: There are several achievements for breaking things, either parts or the company.
- Acquired Poison Immunity: In the IT Expansion, Ira T. Elster has poison injected into himself every few weeks to build up an immunity. He tries to do the same thing to his computer by pumping it full of viruses, but finds out the hard way it doesn't work like that.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Instead of being built-in, several upgrades you can buy are things to reduce fiddle factor, like an extra workbench or automatically plugging in external cables.
- The sequel adds the ability to rotate a PC on the bench and changes the interface so all a player needs to do is click on screws to install or remove them.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In career mode, this happens at the end of Giovanna Sciarra's storyline. Her increasingly weird emails indicate being on the verge of a discovery and requiring hardware from the player for research. This is eventually followed by an email from her brother, informing the player that Giovanna has vanished, leaving only charred equipment behind, and inquiring whether they know anything. Giovanna herself then emails the player to confirm this trope is in effect.
- The sequel's Career Mode reveals that the hardware she had set up wound up burning the shop from the first game down
- Awesome, but Impractical: Watercooling. It cools your CPU and watercooled GPU at the lowest temperatures possible, which is very handy for overclocking, but you need a case that can fit enough radiators, it's trickier to assemble, and it's much more expensive than using an aircooler or even an AIO cooler.
- Bland-Name Product: DFL is probably one for DFI corp. Also, PC-Bay.
- The competitors in the E-sports DLC play Heart of Stone, Guild of Guardians, Fortfight, Soccar and Strike Back Go, but real games (including these) are often mentioned in the main mode.
- In the IT Expansion, there is the company Irratech Corp, PC Toolbox Magazine, the TikkIT app, and the Dekor website.
- The posters in the sequel are for TV shows, video games, and movies that are fictitious.
- Boring, but Practical:
- Unless a request requires you to meet a minimum criteria, to use a certain brand or type of component, or to not use used parts, you can just use the cheapest parts available, and you only need to install the bare minimum required to build a PC: a case, a motherboard, a CPU, thermal paste, a cooler, a drive, a PSU and a GPU, anything more is just a neat bonus.
- Aircoolers are the cheapest and simplest way to cool your CPU, provided you don't overclock it and your PC case has enough height clearance, which most mid-towers and all full-towers do, Whereas both AIO coolers and watercooling are more expensive, and there must be enough fan space for their radiatiors to fit in.
- Brand X: Played straight with Mortoni and Shean, but otherwise averted with all the real-world hardware brands that partnered with the developer.
- Cassandra Truth: In the IT expansion, Quentin Chen, one of the two temp receptionists, is the only person in the company onto what the other temp, Guy Realman, truly is: two kids disguised in a coat who somehow managed to get a job in Irratech so they could play video games on their work computers while ditching school. HR, on the other hand, waves Guy's oddities away as physical impairments, and reprimands Quentin in turn.
- GIS Syndrome: A lot of the wallpapers found on your clients' PCs seem to be lifted off google images. A feature was later patched in where the player's own in-game PC would use their actual background image. The sequel uses the player's own PC wallpaper by default.
- Incompetence, Inc.: The player's uncle ran what could generously be called a cowboy operation. Routinely forgetting thermal paste on the CPU, never running tests before releasing a fix, and keeping barely out of the red before stealing some money from the business's limited bank account for gas as a final act before dumping the ailing business without telling the clients and skipping town. The business's not-Yelp reviews are rock bottom and a couple of the first scripted fixes are send-backs from disgruntled customers claiming the repairs didn't fix anything. Fortunately he was small-time enough too few people heard the bad buzz to stop you turning it around.
- In the sequel, an accident caused an accident that burned down the shop seen in the first game, and you are the one in charge of a new shop and are teaching your uncle how to do tasks properly.
- Loophole Abuse: Some customers will ask you to overclock their CPU or GPU to a certain frequency, but since it's only the minimum frequency required to complete a task, you can instead install a CPU/GPU of at least equal base frequency.
- Percussive Maintenance: The printer in IrraTech has one of the ways to fix it if turning it off and on again doesn't work. Hitting it five times to fix it gives the "PC LOAD LETTER" achievement.
- Product Placement: The main draw of the game. The game prominently showcases products that you can buy in real life and there are posters of real magazine covers plastered all over your workshop. Likewise, almost all the game titles mentioned in the game really exist on Steamnote . Likewise, there are several DLCs centered around the real life Original Equipment Manufacturers (NZXT, Asus' ROG, Gigabyte's Aorus and Razer, to name a few)
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Your own office PC has parts like any other PC in game, and can be disassembled. This is intended to allow you to "trick out" your rig when you just feel like spending some money (or some awesome-looking used parts you may happen to find), but you may even downgrade your PC to help fulfill customer requests or to recoup some cash (it may help you get through Early Game Hell in hard mode). However, if you are dumb or careless enough to sell enough parts that you can't build a PC anymore, you'll be stuck without any way to access your email or shop.
- You Have Researched Breathing: For some reason, you don't get access to certain parts such as storage and additional workbenches until you reach a certain level, regardless of how much money you have.
