ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs

Overview

ReStory: Chill Electronics Repairs is a cozy, narrative-driven shop management sim from Mandragora, the studio behind I Am Future, published by tinyBuild. It launched August 6, 2026 on Steam for Windows and macOS at S$15.99 (€16.99-19.99 depending on region). You run a small electronics repair shop on the streets of mid-2000s Tokyo. Customers bring in broken game consoles, flip phones, music players, cameras, appliances, and officially licensed Atari hardware. You disassemble, clean, diagnose, repair, and reassemble each one while their owners tell you small stories that slowly tangle into the shop's fate.

The launch was a sleeper hit: 300,000 copies in the first week, 500,000 by mid-September, and a Steam rating that climbed from Very Positive past 90% (5,900+ positive reviews out of 6,200+).tinyBuild scheduled a free content update for September 21 to celebrate (Kaito and Haruhi return for a new story beat), though it slipped at least three times while the team finalized a collaboration; the last patch train (1.0.010r through 1.0.013r) fixed memory leaks, story blockers, Mac issues, and added 5 save slots. A content drop is still officially promised.

The repair loop is real work, stylized: screws come out, parts lift free, dust wipes off, broken components get replaced, solder joints get reflowed, firmware gets flashed. The challenge is never failing, it is throughput: how many devices per in-game day, at what quality, for how much yen.

What You Are Actually Playing

The game is two systems stapled together. The workbench is the meat: physical, tactile, point-and-drag repair work where every device is a puzzle of parts. The web browser is the meta: a fictional Y2K internet (search engine, shops, email, forums, review sites) where you buy parts, accept mail orders, hunt licenses, and read your own reviews.

Who it is for: PowerWash Simulator and Unpacking players who want a job to do with their hands, retro hardware nerds who will recognize every parody brand (Pokia 3310, Blueberry, Mapple Mypod, Eggotchi, Brick Game, Game Duck, XI-box, Autorolla), and anyone who wants lo-fi Tokyo ambience and slow money.

Who it is not for: players who need the narrative to justify the grind. The story is the game's soft spot, review consensus is blunt about it: pleasant but thin, with a rushed ending and dialogue that drags for players who skipped it. The repair loop is the product; treat the story as free garnish.

One honest caveat: a vocal minority of reviews (helpful-voted into the hundreds) object to generative AI use in some art assets and the absence of an AI disclosure tag on the store page. The developers acknowledged outsourced art containing generated elements after players flagged it. If that is a hard line for you, decide before buying; the refund window is short and the dispute dominates recent negative reviews.

Getting Started: First 30 Minutes

1. Fix Hashimoto's phone first. Your landlord's repair is the tutorial and the First fix! achievement (98.5%). It teaches the full loop: intake, inspection, disassembly, cleaning, replacement, reassembly.

2. Buy the Air Duster (¥1,000) immediately from Home Depot. It is the cheapest tool and the only consumable, but it makes dust cleaning trivial early when brush passes cost the most time.

3. Save for the Professional Screwdriver (¥11,000). The ratchet mechanism doubles screw speed. This is the first real money purchase and the Twist and turn achievement. Do not buy decorations first.

4. Watch the bucket guy. Early on, a character with a bucket offers to fix your internet connection. Say yes. The internet unlocks Outlink Express email orders, the marketplace, and the entire shopping economy. No internet, no business.

5. Accept cleaning-only email orders when grinding. The WWW achievement (25 email orders completed, 75.2% of players) goes three times faster on cleaning jobs than repair jobs. Prefer orders listed as cleaning or cleaning+repair during your first week.

6. Read the to-do list in the notebook. Every device on the bench shows requested services. Resoldering is NOT listed there; it is a hidden extra task that appears when you pick up a part. Check every part for light-blue trace lines before reassembling.

7. Pay your bills. Once the mail carrier introduces bills, an envelope lands on your counter. Stuff the requested amount from your cash register into it, put it back. Do it twice for All bills paid! (95.8%). Skip one on purpose for the Bankrupt achievement if you are a completionist; it is a real missable otherwise.

Beginner Mistakes to Avoid

Core Mechanics Deep Dive

The Repair Stack

Every device run follows the same pipeline, and the wiki documents it cleanly:

Intake → Notebook to-do list → Disassemble (screwdriver)
      → Clean (brush / air duster / ultrasonic bath)
      → Repair (swap broken parts from Packuten / marketplace / Haruhi deliveries)
      → Resolder (hidden task: light-blue lines on boards)
      → Reassemble → Optional: paint, stickers, firmware (Unlock-ToolKit)
      → Courier pickup → Payment (+ tips) → Review

The pipeline's hidden complexity is the resolder check. A clean board with light-blue lines along traces or IC pins needs solder work, and the to-do list never mentions it. Miss it and the device comes back broken. One known bug: occasionally the lines never turn light blue but the game still demands soldering; the fix is placing the part back on the mat and picking it up again.

The Tool Ladder

Tools unlock in tiers; the advanced version only appears after you buy the basic one. The full purchase order, with prices from the wiki:

Money priorities in the first week: Ratchet Screwdriver → Tip Jar → Thick Brush. The ultrasonic bath is the single biggest quality-of-life unlock in the game (the Hands Free! achievement), but at ¥80,000 it is a week-two goal. The electrician questline gates the Soldering Iron, which gates the Akiba Repair Masters' Competition, which gates story progress. Talk to the electrician as soon as he appears.

Licenses: The Real Progression

21 service licenses exist, sold through Packuten for a combined ¥2,459,000. Each license unlocks a device family: you cannot repair, accept email orders for, or compete with devices you are not licensed for. The achievement chain (Official Partner → Golden Partner → the absurdly named middle tier → Platinum Partner) tracks buying them all. Real-money priority: buy licenses for device families that match your incoming mail orders first, and remember competition devices can only be ordered if you hold the matching license.

The Marketplace and Flipping

Gozilla Fairfox's Marketplace sells second-hand devices and spare-part boxes. The Flipper achievement (buy 5 devices) is trivial; the economy is the real prize. Buy items marked functional from above-average-rated sellers, clean them on the bench, and resell for margin. Part boxes (Lootbox/Gambler achievements track opening them) are the cheap way to stock parts without touching Packuten singles, and the community consensus is to buy every box you see: only 1-2 appear per in-game day, and the Frugal run needs the supply.

The Frugal achievement (no individual part purchases from Packuten, ever) needs its own run or an early decision: part boxes do NOT count against it, so source everything from the marketplace from day one. One player report contradicts the boxes-don't-count claim, so if 100% is the goal, start a Frugal run with the strictest interpretation: no Packuten parts tab purchases at all, boxes and marketplace devices only.

Cleaning: Dust, Stains, and the Bath

Three dirt layers, three tools. Dust wipes with the brush (radius upgrades matter: 100 parts = Big cleaning!, 1,000 = Galactic cleaning!, both tracked per-playthrough). Sticky stains need brush passes. The ultrasonic bath batch-processes up to 9 parts while you do something else, and bath cleaning also counts toward the cleaning achievements per patch 1.0.011r. Time-saver rule: any part going in the bath anyway should never see a brush.

The Akiba Repair Masters' Competition

The story's competitive spine. Qualify by meeting the electrician, getting the Soldering Iron, and helping the marketing specialist. Then install the Akiba Championship app (arrives by email) and order competition devices, only ones you are licensed for. Each arrives in a box; drop it on the workbench mat, and the mat turns purple. The challenge: full assembly of the device, from a scatter of parts, from memory, against the clock. No hints. Every mistake resets all parts while the clock runs.

Beat the target time, mail the device out, collect the yen. Four wins advance the story; the achievement ladder (Promise of Akiba → Star of Akiba → Legend of Akiba) tracks 29 total competition devices. The winners' targets are gentle, early devices clear in under 3 minutes, but the Nony Goman (5:02), Palaloid (4:40), and IDM ThinkerDad (3:51, ¥12,800 reward) demand practiced assembly order. Pro technique: repair each competition model through normal orders first, narrating the part order aloud; the muscle memory transfers directly to the timed run.

Customers, Arcs, and the Two Endings

Characters each carry a story arc with real misses. The load-bearing facts:

• Baketsu (Ghost in the Frame): invite him to your place and wait for him to find the watch. Critical: do not invite anyone else over first, or he never mentions it.
• Haruhi (Melancholy): tell her you do not trust the courier, offer her your place, talk after her final repair.
• Kaito (Ronin): his arc requires refusing to house Baketsu and Haruhi. Community-verified: you can house Haruhi and Baketsu together in one run, but Kaito demands a run where both were refused. Three arcs, minimum three runs for 100%.
• The Eggotchi girl (Origami): fix it free, refuse the courier's money, wait for the thank-you origami.
• The ending: after Yamato announces the concert cancellation, Hashimoto offers the final choice. Sell the shop to Takumi and donate the proceeds (Rock of the Ages!, the good ending) or accept the shopping center development (Globalization, the bad ending). Save before this conversation.

Progression Strategy

The money curve is gentle but the sink is real: ¥2.46M in licenses, ¥1M+ in top tools, ¥57,600 in all 17 decorations. Efficient players hit Millionaire! incidentally; Business Shark (a single high-value sale) happens naturally once high-tier licensed devices flow through.

Daily routine that out-earns reactive play:

Morning:  read email (Outlink Express), accept cleaning-heavy orders
          check Marketplace for part boxes and functional flips
          buy any new license you can now afford
Midday:   batch repairs; bath parts while screwing others
Evening:  complete and ship devices before courier cutoff
          shred broken parts, restock consumables
          bike-skip only when backlog is empty

The bike by the shop's right side skips to the next day and saves the game. Employee of the Month / Quarterly Report / Akiba Feels Like Home track day count; the bike-skip method reaches them fast, but bills still arrive, so keep a cash cushion before skipping. Akiba Never Sleeps! is its opposite: work 7 consecutive days without touching the bike (168 in-game hours). Stock parts, orders, and marketplace items first; nothing delivers between midnight and 8 AM.

Weekly milestones:

Tool and Upgrade Tier List

Step-by-Step Strategy

1. The Zero-Waste Opening

Fix Hashimoto, take every walk-in cleaning job, and spend nothing for two days except the Air Duster. Bank ¥11,000, buy the Ratchet Screwdriver, and immediately feel the difference: screws that took four seconds now take two. Bank again to ¥15,000 for the Tip Jar. From here every order pays 10% extra, permanently.

2. The Cleaning-Order Grind (WWW + Big Cleaning!)

Accept only cleaning-tagged email orders until WWW (25 orders) pops. Every disassembled device routes dirty parts straight to the brush or bath; the cleaning counters (100 then 1,000 parts) climb passively. Cleaning orders are also the fastest per-unit money early because they skip the parts-purchase step entirely.

3. The Marketplace Flipping Engine

Each morning, scan the Marketplace: buy every spare-part box on sight, and any functional device from a high-rated seller under ~¥1,200. Clean and resell the devices at 4+ condition, bank the margin, and only dip into Packuten for a part you need today. This funds licenses roughly twice as fast as orders alone, and it keeps the Frugal achievement alive as an option.

4. The Electrician Rush

The moment the electrician appears, take his quest, fix his item, and buy the Soldering Iron (¥40,000) the day it unlocks in Binotaro. Then push the marketing specialist's tasks until the Akiba Championship app lands in your inbox. The competition is the story gate; the sooner you are in, the sooner four wins move you to the game's back half.

5. The Competition Memory System

Before each timed attempt, repair the same model through a normal walk-in order while speaking the assembly order aloud (shell, board, shields, ribbon, battery, buttons...). Then take the challenge: drag the box onto the mat, breathe, and assemble in that narrated order without looking at the parts. Win the easy money devices first (Unicorp 99L at ¥4,100 for 53 seconds of work is the best rate in the game), then practice the slow ones (Nony Goman, Palaloid) over several days.

6. The License Sweep

Late game, your problem inverts: money piles up, licenses are the wall. Buy in this order: families matching your most frequent email orders, then the cheapest remaining licenses, then the expensive final tier. Every license widens both your order pool and your competition device pool, so the last ¥500k goes fast.

7. The Three-Arc Completion Plan

Run one: befriend and house Baketsu AND Haruhi (Ghost in the Frame + Melancholy), finish their quests, take the Rock of the Ages! good ending. Run two (Frugal rules if going for 100%): refuse both houseguests, complete Kaito's arc (Ronin), take the Globalization bad ending on a pre-ending save first, reload for the good ending. With a pre-choice save, both endings fall out of run two, and the full 50-achievement sweep closes in three playthroughs total, matching the community's 25-hour estimate.

Advanced Tips

The resolder tell. If a device you fully repaired comes back flagged, you missed solder work. Before final reassembly of any electronic device, hover every board: light-blue trace lines mean solder mode. Make it a habit on the pickup, not the assembly.

The bath-first rule. Any part headed for the ultrasonic bath should bypass the brush entirely. Brush time on parts that will soak anyway is pure waste; batch nine parts, work screws while it runs.

Sticker overflow is free money for the Sticker Bombing achievement. There is no per-device sticker limit. One device, one hundred stickers, achievement done, though players report instability with very heavy sticker counts, so save first.

Shredder math. The base Shredder returns a percentage of part cost; the Legendary and Eternal versions multiply it. Broken parts are not trash, they are deferred income. Shred daily, upgrade the shredder before the second bath tier.

The watch bug, and the invitation order. Baketsu's watch scene only triggers if he is your first houseguest. Invite him alone, wait, get the scene, then invite others. Players who invited Haruhi first permanently lost the arc in that run.

Bike-skip economics. Skipping days advances day-count achievements but still charges bills and pauses deliveries overnight. Skip only with an empty queue and a cash buffer; otherwise you are paying rent for nothing.

Reviewme.not is your report card. Email-order completions generate reviews; 5 reviews = First reviews!, 25 = Getting popular!, and the 100-review tier (Best Shop in Akiba!) is the long grind. Cleaning-heavy email orders are the volume play.

The competition device order trick. Competition devices only arrive during the courier's working hours, and you can only order what you are licensed for. Queue an order before closing shop each night so the box is waiting in the morning.

Fix the solder-line display bug. When the game demands soldering but no lines show blue, place the part on the mat and pick it up again. Repeat once if needed. Do not disassemble further; the bug is display-side, confirmed by the wiki.

Save slots exist now. Patch 1.0.013r added 5 slots. Slot 1 is your rolling save, slot 2 is a pre-Hashimoto-final-choice save (both endings from one run), slot 3 is a fresh-run seed for the Frugal/Kaito run.

FAQ

How long is the game? About 20 hours for one story pass, 25 hours to 100% across roughly three playthroughs. The 50 achievements include 8 missables tied to mutually exclusive character arcs and both endings.

Is there a time limit or fail state? Bills and the day/night cycle create pressure, but there is no game over. Ignoring bills earns the Bankrupt achievement and presumably landlord trouble; otherwise the shop hums along at your pace.

What is the fastest way to make money? Early: cleaning-only email orders plus the Tip Jar. Mid: ultrasonic bath throughput and marketplace flips. Late: high-tier licensed device orders and the Eternal Shredder's junk economy. Competition wins (¥4,100-12,800 each) are the best burst income once your assembly memory is trained.

Can I lock myself out of achievements? Yes, eight of them. The big three: Ghost in the Frame (Baketsu must be your first houseguest), Ronin (requires refusing to house the other two), and the ending choice. Also Origami (refuse the courier's payment for the Eggotchi girl). Save before every story conversation.

Do I need the Frugal run for 100%? Yes: no individual part purchases from Packuten for a whole run. Part boxes seem safe by the guide consensus but one player report says they blocked it, so run strictest-rules if 100% matters. Marketplace devices are the confirmed-safe part source.

How hard is the Akiba Competition? The four story wins are easy with the narrate-then-assemble method. The full 29-device ladder for Legend of Akiba is the real test; the Palaloid and Nony Goman assembly orders take deliberate practice. No hint system exists, mistakes reset the board.

What about the AI art controversy? Some outsourced art contains generative AI elements; the developers confirmed it after launch, and the store page carries no AI disclosure tag. It does not affect gameplay. Weigh it yourself before purchase; recent reviews are split along exactly this line.

Is it on Steam Deck? Windows and macOS only, no Linux build, partial controller support. Deck players report functional-but-annoying experiences, including controller buttons dropping out per session (a known complaint in reviews). Mouse and keyboard on a desktop is the intended way to play, the bench work is precision pointing.

Is the DLC/update situation settled? The free September content update (Kaito and Haruhi returning) was announced for September 21, delayed for a collaboration clearance, and still pending as of mid-October. The patch train (through 1.0.013r) has been steadily fixing memory leaks, save slots, and story blockers. Buy for what is in the box; treat the update as a bonus.

Is it worth full price? At roughly €17-20 for 20+ hours of an unusually tactile repair sim that sold half a million copies in six weeks: yes, with the story-quality caveat. The workbench is the game, and the workbench is genuinely great.

Final Tips & Verdict

The whole game compresses into one discipline: touch every part before you close the shell. Check for dust, check for blue solder lines, check the notebook, and the five-star reviews and the money follow. Players who rush reassembly redo devices; players who inspect once, deliver once.

Verdict: the best repair-loop game of 2026, a cozy sim with real hands, a lovingly fake Y2K internet, and a story that stays out of the way if you let it. The AI-art disclosure issue is the one genuine strike against an otherwise charming package. 4/5, recommended for tinkerers, cozy players, and anyone who has ever wanted to know what is inside a Pokia 3310.

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Last reviewed by Game How To Editorial. We play each game, verify controls against official sources, and update guides when game mechanics change.