Sticky Business is a casual business Simulation Game developed by Spellgarden Games and published by Assemble Entertainment. Originally conceived in a 3-week Game Jam, it was released in full on July 17, 2023 on Steam and on April 17, 2024 on the Nintendo Switch.
You manage your online sticker shop by designing stickers, printing them, and then filling orders by packing the stickers and shipping them. Creating stickers involves putting various components together in the in-game drawing program, changing their colors, resizing, rotating, flipping, and layering them as desired. Afterward, you arrange your stickers in sticker sheets for printing, then pack and ship them to your customers. You then can use your hard-earned money and fame (represented by hearts) to buy upgrades such as more sticker slots, colors, foil effects, packing materials, and especially sticker components.
Your customers not only send you compliments as they order your stickers, but some of them have their lives influenced by your store. These regulars update you through text messages, and you follow up on their stories by fulfilling their special requests. The game also has streaming integration so that your viewers can also become your customers.
Sticky tropes:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Most of the regulars of your sticker shop are humans with unusual skin colors.
- Animal Lover: Bernd S. likes animal stickers and orders them from you to help him cope with his burnout from work. He then quits his job to work at the animal shelter at Patrick K.'s suggestion, and Bernd feels happier about himself.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- To prevent you from accidentally mixing up your orders, you're locked into one once you start packing the stickers for it.
- In the Christmas update, if you miss a day in collecting festive sticker parts, they can be bought at the upgrade shop anytime using hearts.
- Bland-Name Product: One of the gaming sticker parts you can collect is the Guerrilla Collective.
- Blatant Lies: The frog agent has an unknown name, which is rendered in question marks, but their username is "@notafrog".
- Did Not Get the Girl: David tries asking his crush out by gifting her the stickers his dad bought from your store. However, she only likes him as a friend, but David is fine with hanging out with her platonically, anyway, and even gifts her more stickers for her birthday.
- Downloadable Content: Plan With Me is the first paid DLC of the game, which adds more than 100 stationery-themed sticker parts along with new glitter effects, candies and small gifts, and 10 new customer stories. It was released on December 18, 2023.
- An Entrepreneur Is You: You run your own online sticker shop, where you design stickers by assembling components, and then sell them by printing, packing, and shipping them.
- Epistolary Novel: While the game is primarily a sticker shop simulator, you follow the stories of your regulars through their text messages.
- Excuse Plot: You start your own online shop, with your Old Friend Julia Klein supporting your business. Other than following the storylines of the other regulars, the most that you do in the game is designing and selling your stickers.
- Featureless Protagonist: The player is only represented by a generic humanoid avatar in their sticker shop's website, and at the end of Anja F.'s storyline, she draws them as a cat because she doesn't know what they look like since they've been only texting each other.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Robert Frey is a vampire who doesn't mean any harm and instead orders plant stickers from you to cope with working in an abusive workplace. He then uses his stickers to count down the days until his resignation and goes to Scotland for vacation before starting his new job as a gardener.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- The amount of in-game time taken to make a sticker is the same no matter how long in real time you actually take to create it; whether you slap on a few sticker parts or take a real-world hour designing an intricate sticker, it'll always consume the same-sized segment in the timer.
- If a special customer requests a sticker with words on it, you need to use the pre-made words from the text section of the upgrade shop in order to progress their storyline. Spelling them with other sticker parts doesn't count.
- Gender-Inclusive Writing: The Gingerbread People sticker parts aren't called Gingerbread "Man" and "Woman", but rather "Gingerbread Person" and "Gingerbread Person With Dress".
- Gotta Catch Them All: There are achievements for buying all the upgrades and sticker components, and there are counters tracking which ones you've already bought. For the latter, you have to use your existing components in the stickers you sell to level them up and gain hearts, which are used to buy more sticker parts and colors. The other upgrades, on the other hand, are simply bought with coins.
- Holiday Mode:
- The Stick or Treat update added Halloween-themed sticker parts, candies, packing materials, and foil effects.
- The Christmas update added festive sticker parts, candies, packing materials, and foil effects, the first of which were unlocked daily during December 2023.
- Interface Spoiler:
- If a special customer doesn't ask you for a certain sticker type in order for you to unlock their storyline, it means they will eventually contact you later in another customer's storyline.
- The Christmas sticker part section in the Upgrade store has an incomplete checklist, even if you bought all the available components at the time. This is because the Christmas update has the Festive Calendar system in unlocking new ones, where you have to Play Every Day to collect them (although they can be bought with hearts anytime if you miss a day).
- In-Universe Game Clock: Each action in running your online sticker shop (designing stickers, printing them, packing them, and shipping them) consumes a portion of the in-game day, and you can't do any of them if they exceed the time limit. Relaxed Mode decreases the amount of time they take, while Limitless Mode removes the timer entirely.
- Jive Turkey: In Plan With Me, Timothy K. says words such as "lit" and "no cap" when ordering stickers from you.
- Kids Love Dinosaurs: David is a prepubescent kid who loves dinosaur stickers, and his father Marc asks you to make some for him when he first discovers your online sticker shop.
- Language Barrier: In Plan With Me, Tim can't read Sanjay's letters because they're written in Hindi, so he takes his time to learn the language so he can understand him.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Three of your regulars at your online sticker shop are Daisy (a cat), Inspector P. (an anthropomorphic raccoon), and "@notafrog", while the rest are humans and a vampire. Daisy's case gets subverted when the picture she sends you at the end of her storyline reveals that she's a human, while the cat is just her profile pic.
- Music Is Eighth Notes: Two of the music sticker parts you can buy are solo and dual eighth notes.
- Parent with New Paramour: Marc starts dating Pedro after the former lost his wife one year ago, but he's nervous about telling his son David because he fears that the latter might think Pedro will "replace" his mother. However, David turns out to be supportive of their relationship, and even buys Marc your Pride stickers to support them.
- Pen Pals: In Plan With Me, Tim and Sanjay are best friends even if they're half a world apart, the former being from England and the latter from India. They write letters to each other to keep in touch. They finally meet in person when Sanjay overcomes his fear of flying to visit Tim.
- Post-Treatment Lollipop: In Plan With Me, Dr. Isabella Diaz used to bribe her patients with lollipops, but she switches to using your stickers instead so she won't give them a sugar rush.
- Rainbow Lite: The rainbow sticker part lacks orange and indigo while the rainbow washi tape lacks only the latter. True to its design, the Rainbow Pride flag is also missing indigo.
- Rare Candy: You can pack candy or small gifts along with the ordered stickers to instantly increase the amount of XP each sticker part used in the order gets. This can also be done by adding more stickers not part of the order.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Played for Drama in Plan With Me. Carlota's mom has early-stage Alzheimer's and they're both struggling to come to terms with it. Carlota then gets the courage to order your habit tracker stickers to help her mom remember to take her meds.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The frog agent uses overly formal words when ordering stickers from you."Require adhesive decals."
- Shout-Out: In Plan With Me:
- William Forger's username is "@will.i.am".
- The achievement for completing Violet and Emily's storyline is called "Smells Like Sticker Spirit".
- Stock Foreign Name: Tim's Indian Pen Pal in Plan With Me is named Sanjay.
- Struggling Single Mother: In Plan With Me, Violet Stone is a single mom who struggles to help her teenage daughter Emily with her exams. Violet asks you for some stickers with washi tape on them to try cheering Emily up since the latter liked stickers as a kid. They eventually rebuild their relationship when Emily uses your stickers to help her study for her exams.
- Taxonomic Term Confusion: Bernd asks you to make rodent stickers such as rats, rabbits, and capybaras. Rabbits are actually lagomorphs but are commonly mistaken for rodents.
- Thanking the Viewer: The end of the credits thanks you, the player, for playing the game.
- Variable Mix: The main theme seamlessly transitions into its variants when you're designing a new sticker, printing it, or ending the in-game day.
- Video Game Perversity Prevention: The devs announced in the Spellgarden Games Discord Server that they won't be adding individual letters as sticker elements to prevent people from spelling inappropriate words in their stickers. However, there's no stopping them from using other sticker parts to make such content...
- Violation of Common Sense: One way to increase the EXP gained from selling stickers is to add more stickers not part of the order. In real life, this is a dark marketing pattern called "sneaking into basket", which is illegal according to the European Commission.
- White-Tailed Reindeer: The reindeer sticker part is designed after a white-tailed deer instead of an actual reindeer.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In Plan With Me, Sanjay is afraid of flying, which makes it hard for him to meet his Pen Pal Tim in person, so the former asks you for some airplane stickers to help him overcome his fear.
- Writer's Block:
- Carla F. has her own sticker shop like you, but she struggles with a creative block because she believes she has to follow trends in order to make a profit. She then decides to make her own sticker designs, and her new stickers get sold out on the first three days.
- In Plan With Me, Anja used to be an artist 40 years ago, but she gave up her passion to work as a caregiver. She orders watercolor stickers from you for some inspiration to cure her artist's block. Even after quitting her job, she still feels lost, but she realizes that she hasn't been taking care of herself, so she orders more stickers from you to cheer herself up. At the end, she sends you a drawing of herself along with a cat representing you as thanks for motivating her.
