What if your job was to inspect trading cards all day, and it turned out your employer was secretly running a murder cover-up? That’s the wild pitch of Trading Card Inspector, the indie simulation game that dropped on Steam on June 6, 2026, and immediately became every card collector’s cozy obsession.
Part Papers Please, part TCG love letter, and entirely unhinged, at under $7, it’s already sitting at 96% positive reviews. Your desk at Habubis Corporation is ready. The shredder is waiting.
| Game | Trading Card Inspector |
|---|---|
| Developer | Daydream Gallery |
| Released | June 6, 2026 |
| Steam Rating | 96% Positive |
| Price | $6.99 / $4.89 |
| Genre | Papers-Please-em-up |
What Is Trading Card Inspector on Steam?
Developed by three-person Victorian studio Daydream Gallery and published by Catoptric Games, Trading Card Inspector is a “papers-please-em-up” built specifically for trading card obsessives. Instead of stamping passports for nervous border crossers, you’re sitting at a corporate desk appraising fictional trading cards, checking authenticity, flagging fakes, and assigning accurate market values to each piece of cardboard that lands in front of you.
It launched on June 6, 2026, as part of Frosty Games Fest, a showcase of Australian and Aotearoan indie games running alongside Summer Game Fest. The timing was sharp: the introductory 30% discount brings it down to $4.89 until June 20, making it an absolute steal for what you get. Early players clearly agree, the 96% positive score on Steam arrived fast, and reviews have been glowing ever since.
At its core, this is a non-sports trading card game in the truest sense: no real-world IPs, no licensed athletes or pop culture tie-ins, just a completely original, hand-drawn fictional TCG universe built from the ground up, with more personality than most licensed card games can claim.
What Is the Habubis TCG? Inside the Fictional Card Game Universe
The entire game is built around Habubis Corporation and its wildly popular (in-universe) Habubis Trading Card Game. Every card you inspect, appraise, or destroy is part of this original fictional TCG, complete with its own lore, character history, and collectible hierarchy.
There are over 160 unique, hand-drawn cards in the full game, each with its own story tucked away in the in-game Card Gallery, a feature that will send any card collector straight into a completionist spiral. Here’s a full breakdown of what the Habubis TCG universe contains:
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Total Card Count | 160+ unique hand-drawn cards |
| Card Gallery | Individual lore and backstory per card |
| Shiny Card Variants | Yes, keep your eyes peeled for them |
| Fictional TCG Name | Habubis Trading Card Game |
| Card Conditions | Valid (keep & value) or Invalid (shred) |
| Valuation System | Accurate market value appraisal mechanic |
| Visual Style | Distinctive 1-bit, highly customizable |
| Mystery Character | Plarbo (no further questions) |
These aren’t Pokémon knockoffs or Magic clones. The Habubis cards are absurdist, charming, and occasionally deeply weird, which fits perfectly with the game’s dark comedy tone. It’s a fully realized non-sports trading card universe built from scratch, and spending time in the Card Gallery after your shift is half the fun.
Is Trading Card Inspector Just Papers Please With Trading Cards?
That’s the obvious comparison and it’s partially fair, but Trading Card Inspector is very much its own thing. Yes, the core mechanic borrows the document-checking loop from Papers Please. But the execution, tone, and content make it feel genuinely distinct. Where Papers Please is a grey, grinding exercise in moral weight, this game is cozy, funny, and lovingly silly about trading card culture.
Here’s exactly how a typical inspection shift at Habubis Corporation plays out:
- A card lands on your desk. It could be a glorious holographic rarity or a blatant counterfeit somebody tried to sneak through.
- Consult your reference materials. You’ve got guideline notes, errata memos, and reference lists, real inspection tools, just applied to fake cardboard.
- Make the call. Valid or invalid? You’ve got to be sure before you commit.
- Value the authentic ones. Pin an accurate market price on every card that passes inspection before it ships.
- Feed the fakes to the shredder. There is something genuinely satisfying about this. No further explanation needed.
- Survive the shift, then do it again. New rules, new quirks, and new modifiers stack on with every passing day.
As you advance through Story Mode, the gameplay modifiers begin warping your perception and layering in new rules that keep the experience from ever getting stale. What starts as a calm card-sorting routine gradually becomes a mildly unhinged corporate nightmare, and the game is clearly having the time of its life making that happen.
Trading Card Inspector Story Mode: Friendship, Corporate Espionage, and Murder?
Don’t let the cute hand-drawn art fool you. There’s a full narrative campaign here, and it absolutely goes places. You start as a fresh hire at Habubis Corporation, an aggressively cheerful company with suspiciously good branding and a card game everyone seems to love. Clock in, inspect cards, collect your pay. Simple enough. Then things start getting strange.
As you work through each shift, the storyline slowly unspools around you:
- Shady characters show up between shifts with agendas that aren’t immediately clear
- Corporate espionage is apparently a real problem inside a trading card company (who knew)
- Friendship dynamics get complicated in ways the marketing never mentioned
- The Truth, an in-game narrative thread, becomes something you’re actively chasing through the inspection grind
- Murder?!, yes, the game literally uses a question mark on this one, which is somehow funnier than just saying it outright
“Fellow sparkly cardboard fiends, this one’s for you.”, The Escapist
The narrative threads are woven into the card-grading gameplay rather than bolted on separately, which means you’re never sitting through story segments reluctantly, you’re discovering the plot while you work. That’s smart design from a small team, and it keeps the pacing tight throughout.
How Does Endless Mode Work in Trading Card Inspector?
Once Story Mode wraps, Endless Mode opens up as the game’s high-score sandbox, and it’s where replayability kicks into high gear. This is the mode where the modifier system becomes truly dangerous (in the best way).
| Endless Mode Feature | What It Does |
|---|---|
| Gameplay Modifiers | Unlocked through Story Mode, stackable in Endless |
| Risk vs Reward | More modifiers = higher difficulty + higher pay per card |
| Earn Cash | Spend at the Habubis Company Store on cosmetics & upgrades |
| Win Condition | There isn’t one, you play until you ultimately perish |
| Replayability | High, different modifier combos create entirely new experiences |
The modifier stacking system is the secret weapon of the game’s long-term appeal. Each new modifier you enable cranks up the difficulty, but also increases your earnings per successfully graded card. Push too hard and your score crumbles. Play it safe and you’re leaving money on the table. That tension is exactly what keeps the “one more shift” loop ticking.
What Do You Unlock in Trading Card Inspector? Full Customization Breakdown
Beyond the cards themselves, Trading Card Inspector is stacked with unlockable content, particularly if you’re the type who spends twenty minutes debating playmat choices before a tournament. The customization options are genuinely generous for a $6.99 indie title.
Cards & Collection:
- 160+ unique hand-drawn cards to collect and complete
- Every single card has its own dedicated lore entry in the Card Gallery
- Shiny card variants exist and are absolutely worth hunting
- Booster pack mechanic available via the in-game store
Workspace Customization:
- 40 unlockable colour palettes, each one transforms the entire visual feel of the game
- 20 desk patterns, your workspace, your rules
- Multiple silly desk-widgets to populate your inspection station
The 1-bit visual style is the backbone of all of this. It’s crisp, retro, and deeply charming, and because the whole game is rendered in that distinctive monochrome aesthetic, each new colour palette unlock feels like a genuinely fresh experience. It’s clever design that multiplies content without multiplying cost.
From Game Jam Winner to Steam Hit, The Trading Card Inspector Origin Story
The best part of Trading Card Inspector might not be the game itself, it’s how it got made. The whole thing started as a game jam entry called Habubis Trading Card Inspector, built in just over five days for b3agz Jam 2025 by the three-person Daydream Gallery team.
Not only did they finish it in five days, they won the Community Vote prize. That reception lit a fire under the team, who spent the following months expanding the prototype into a full commercial release:
- A complete Story Mode with genuine narrative depth and characters
- 160+ hand-drawn cards expanded from the jam version’s smaller original set
- Endless Mode with the full modifier system
- Deep desk and palette customization across 40+ unlockables
- A full original soundtrack, available as a Steam bundle add-on
It’s a genuinely great small-studio origin story: five days, a game jam, a community vote win, and about a year of hard work later, a fully-fledged, 96%-rated Steam release. The passion for trading card culture that The Escapist identified in their preview is clearly real, and it shows in every hand-drawn card on screen.
Should You Buy Trading Card Inspector? Is It Worth the Price?
Let’s be direct about it. Here’s everything you need to make the call:
| Category | Detail |
|---|---|
| Regular Price | $6.99 |
| Launch Discount (until June 20) | $4.89, best price ever recorded |
| Developer | Daydream Gallery (3-person, Victoria, Australia) |
| Publisher | Catoptric Games |
| Steam User Rating | 96% Positive (26 reviews at launch) |
| Best For | Card collectors, Papers Please fans, cozy game enthusiasts |
| Modes Available | Story Mode + Endless Mode |
| Soundtrack Available | Yes, Steam bundle option |
At under $7, or less than $5 during the launch window, this is one of 2026’s easiest recommends in the indie space. If you’ve ever opened a pack, organized a binder, or argued about PSA grades at a card show, Trading Card Inspector was built specifically for you. And even if you haven’t, the inspection loop is tight enough, the story strange enough, and the cards charming enough to hook puzzle and simulation fans who’ve never touched a trading card in their lives.