Cart Panic! OS: E-Commerce Tycoon

Cart Panic! OS: E-Commerce Tycoon is a business game set entirely on a desktop operating system. You start with $50, an unattractive desktop, debt, no store reviews and a supplier who is already late. You build an online store while dealing with hackers, viruses, angry customers and a card game that puts your profits at risk.

Run your store

Design your storefront, negotiate with suppliers, manage inventory, fulfill orders and respond to customers. Store layouts, themes, colors and fonts affect conversion rates; cheaper suppliers can cause defects, and a poor reply to a customer can damage your reputation. You can launch marketing campaigns, track their return on investment and manage your budget as advertising algorithms change.

The game includes 19 functional desktop apps, including Dashboard, Analytics, Marketing, Finance, Employees, Hacking Terminal, Antivirus and MetaStack. You can drag, minimize, resize and stack windows while switching between tasks, as orders and problems accumulate. Viruses appear randomly, slow the system, corrupt data and demand ransom.

Hack and defend

The Hacking Terminal lets you enter commands to attack targets for payouts or defend your systems against incoming threats. Its command-line interface supports directory navigation, autocomplete and command history. Five hacking minigames cover password cracking, firewall defense, encryption races, network mazes and packet sniffing. Targets range from easy to extreme difficulty, with risks and rewards to match.

Play MetaStack

MetaStack: Wager Ops is a roguelike card game within the desktop. You play poker hands from High Card to Five of a Kind, build combos, and collect patches and plugins. Between rounds, you draft upgrades and wager your in-game profits against increasingly difficult contracts.

The Hype system builds multipliers through consecutive wins, up to 10x. Four difficulty tiers—Safe, Medium, High and Extreme—offer payouts from 1x to 10x. Overclock lets you risk increasing danger for instant multipliers.

Manage the business

You can hire, train and pay employees, as well as fire underperformers. Finance tools track cash flow, loans and taxes, with bankruptcy to avoid. Investments include long-term portfolios and arcade-style day trading with stop-loss and take-profit options. Analytics covers sales funnels, customer satisfaction, top products and performance over time; the Antivirus app scans for threats, quarantines malware and enables real-time protection.

There are over 100 upgrades across eight branches: Storefront, Logistics, Payments, Marketing, Infrastructure, Expansion, Hacking and Security. The game’s systems affect one another, while customers, viruses and other crises continue to demand attention as you manage the store.