A free playable demo for Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator will go live on Steam on September 25 — and what makes it worth adding to your wishlist is not the game’s full animal roster, though that spans everything from betta fish and tarantulas to golden retrievers. It is the camera angle. In a sub-genre where players typically hover above their businesses like an airborne accountant, Onivo Games has built its pet shop from the inside out, dropping you onto the shop floor itself and asking you to manage the whole operation from there.

Onivo Games developed the title; PlayWay S.A., the Warsaw-based Polish publisher behind more than 100 simulation games, is handling publishing for the full game Steam page. The announcement was made via a September 19 press release on September 19, 2026.

What Does First-Person Actually Change in a Shop Sim?

Most management simulations — from Two Point Museum to Planet Zoo — give players an elevated, cursor-driven view of their operation. From that vantage, clicking on a stand or hiring staff is a transaction between you and a menu. First-person simulation changes that architecture entirely.

In a first-person management game, every action is spatial. To restock a fish tank, you walk to it. To groom a cat, you stand in front of the enclosure. To process a sale, you move to the customer. The game’s spatial layout becomes a real design problem — where you place your reptile terrariums relative to the cash register, and how far your bird aviaries sit from your small-animal racks, determine how efficiently your shop day actually runs. The official demo page details these store-building mechanics.

This is the same design logic that made PlayWay-family titles like House Flipper and Car Mechanic Simulator commercially successful: both use first-person perspective to make repetitive tasks feel tactile rather than administrative. You can browse the full PlayWay publisher portfolio to see how many titles follow this approach. The physical cost of movement, the need to face an object before interacting with it, the limited field of view that forces you to scan rather than see the whole store at once — these constraints are, counterintuitively, what make the experience more engaging than a top-down equivalent.

Game design research on player perspective notes that first-person view creates the highest level of embodiment among camera options, because the player sees exactly what the character would see. In a management context, that presence converts routine tasks — sweeping an enclosure, placing a new stand, directing a customer to the parrot section — into something that reads more as running a shop than as optimizing a spreadsheet.

Pet Shop Sim: Familiar Territory, New Studio

Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator does not arrive in an empty market. Pet Shop Simulator, developed by Games Incubator (also in the PlayWay family) and released on Steam in June 2024, occupies a nearly identical premise: first-person, single-player, manage animals, expand your store. You can find the Pet Shop Simulator prologue still available on Steam. The Games Incubator version received a mixed-to-positive reception and has since been ported to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

That context matters for a player deciding how to spend time with the Onivo Games demo. Based on currently available materials, the clearest differences are in scope and polish — Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator appears to extend the animal roster to include arthropods (spiders, scorpions, and similar invertebrates alongside fish, birds, rodents, reptiles, cats, and dogs), and its trailer emphasizes decorating and store atmosphere as equal pillars alongside the management loop. Whether those differences constitute a meaningfully distinct experience is precisely what the September 25 demo will allow players to judge for themselves.

What the Demo Covers and How to Run It

The demo will be available at no cost through Steam starting September 25. Onivo Games has confirmed no embargo restrictions on the demo — players are free to stream, share, and create content without limitation.

System requirements for the demo are accessible by mid-range PC standards. The full Steam demo system requirements are listed on the demo page.

Minimum: Intel Core i5-8400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600; NVIDIA GTX 1060 6 GB or AMD RX 580; 8 GB RAM; 5 GB storage; DirectX 11; Windows 10 64-bit. An SSD is recommended.

Recommended: Intel Core i5-12400F or AMD Ryzen 5 5600; NVIDIA RTX 3060 or AMD RX 6700 XT; 16 GB RAM; DirectX 12; Windows 10 or 11 64-bit. An SSD is required for the best experience.

The SSD requirement at the recommended tier is typical of open-world and first-person simulation games that stream assets dynamically as the player moves through a space — a further indicator that the store environment in this game is designed to be explored rather than managed from a fixed overhead position.

Cozy Sim Genre Context: Why This Market Is Growing

Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator is entering what market analysts now consider one of Steam’s most commercially reliable categories. An analysis of Steam descriptor data by GameDiscoverCo found that the word “cozy” as a primary sales pitch in the short descriptions of high-earning titles — games that have generated over $100,000 in lifetime revenue — grew by 675 percent between 2022 and 2025, rising from 0.4% to 3.1% of successful titles using the descriptor. The cozy game market overall was valued at 973 million dollars in 2024 and is projected to reach approximately $1.47 billion by 2032.

The demographic driving that growth skews toward adults in the 25–45 age range, with a player base that research estimates is 45–55% female — a segment that the traditional gaming industry underserved for years and that now represents one of the most commercially stable audiences on the platform. For a low-stress, family-friendly shopkeeper sim with no combat loop, Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator is positioned precisely where that spending is concentrating.

Where to Follow Development

Onivo Games maintains an active presence on YouTube at youtube.com/OnivoGames and on X (formerly Twitter) at x.com/onivogames. A community Discord is linked through the Steam page. No full game release date has been announced. The full game will be published by PlayWay S.A. and is listed as coming soon on Steam.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator demo come out?

The demo will go live on Steam on September 25, 2026, at no cost. Onivo Games and PlayWay S.A. made the announcement on September 19. An SSD is recommended for the best experience, though the minimum requirements are accessible on most mid-range gaming PCs.

What animals can you keep and sell in Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator?

The full confirmed roster spans seven categories: fish, birds, rodents, reptiles, arthropods (which include species like spiders and scorpions that few other pet shop games include), cats, and dogs. Inventory management is species-specific — each animal type has distinct care requirements and different customer appeal, which shapes the shop’s layout and purchasing strategy.

How is this different from Pet Shop Simulator by Games Incubator?

Both games share a first-person, single-player pet shop management loop and are published within the PlayWay S.A. network. Pet Shop Simulator (Games Incubator, 2024) is the earlier and already-released title. Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator (Onivo Games) appears to offer a broader animal roster including arthropods and places greater emphasis on store decoration and atmosphere as a progression element. The September 25 demo is the most direct way to evaluate whether the execution delivers a meaningfully distinct experience.

Will the demo be available on consoles?

No console release has been announced. The demo and full game are currently confirmed for PC via Steam only. Pet Shop Simulator (Games Incubator) received PS5 and Xbox Series X/S ports in December 2024, so a console version of Ultimate Pet Shop Simulator is not impossible in the future, but nothing has been announced.