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Watch trailer on Steam ↗Blackwater Exchange
Blackwater Gator Studios · Published by Blackwater Gator Studios · Official site ↗
Content notice: Blackwater Exchange contains mature crime themes. The player runs a black market pawn shop operation, buys and resells questionable goods, deals with criminal contacts, and manages heat from corrupt enforcement and raids. The game may reference stolen property, forged documents, suspicious goods, occult items, and illegal business activity. It does not contain nudity, sexual content, graphic violence, gore, suicide, or drug use. Tobacco/alcohol may be implied through environmental details such as smoke, cigarette burns, or gritty shop atmosphere.
1 user reviews — 0% positive (1 reviews) · 18 achievements
Last updated 29 Sept 2026
Run a basement black market pawn shop in a gritty 1990s city. Inspect questionable goods, negotiate with desperate sellers, resell through shady contacts, manage heat, survive raids, and decide whether each item is a payday, a fake, a trap, or a liability.
£7.15
Lowest price we've ever recorded
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Price history
Indie, Simulation, Strategy · 2026 · More £5 - £15 games
About this game
Run a shop no one admits they use
Blackwater Exchange is a 2D black market pawn shop management sim set in a gritty 1990s city.
You run a legal-looking exchange upstairs while the real business happens below: stolen watches, forged documents, suspicious electronics, cursed relics, desperate sellers, and cash changing hands before anyone asks too many questions.
Every item is a gamble
A customer comes down the stairs, drops something on the counter.
Maybe the item is real. Maybe it is fake. Maybe it is damaged, stolen, traceable, underpriced, or worse. Inspect visible clues, use tools, read the seller, and decide what the risk is worth.
Negotiate under pressure
Sellers have moods, patience, lies, and limits.
Push too hard and they may walk. Push the wrong person and they may report you. Pay too much and the day eats your profit. Every offer is a choice between margin, speed, and exposure.
Move goods before they become evidence
Buying the item is only half the job.
Store what you can, stash what you must, and sell through contacts with their own prices, risks, and availability. The right buyer can turn a dirty object into clean profit. The wrong one can leave you holding the problem.
Profit gets attention
Hot goods pay better, but they also raise heat.
Bills, raids, fines, confiscation, suspicious customers, rival pressure, and corrupt enforcement keep success from becoming safe. Legal deals keep the lights on. Dirty deals build the business. Every shortcut leaves a mark.
Features
2D shopkeeper management built around appraisal, negotiation, and resale
Questionable goods with value, condition, authenticity, and risk uncertainty
Customer moods, lies, scams, walkouts, and report risk
Limited inventory, stash decisions, tools, upgrades, and shady contacts
Heat system with raids, fines, confiscation, and corrupt enforcement pressure
Gritty 1990s crime atmosphere
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- OS: Windows 10 or later
- Processor: Dual-core 2.0 GHz or equivalent
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Integrated graphics with Vulkan 1.0 support (Intel HD Graphics 510, AMD Radeon R5, or equivalent)
Recommended
- OS: Windows 10 or later
- Processor: Intel Core i5 or AMD Ryzen 5
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Dedicated graphics with Vulkan 1.2 support (NVIDIA GTX 1060, AMD RX 580, or equivalent)
Supported Languages
Latest news
Patch NotesOfficial
Management Update
Blackwater Exchange — Management Update The Management Update is now live. This is the largest update to Blackwater Exchange so far, focused on giving the game more long-term progression, more reasons to make different decisions from day to day, and substantially more to manage beyond the basement counter. Business Management The Basement is now your first managed location, with the Management screen expanding as your operation grows. You can eventually purchase and operate four unique businesses: * Second-Hand Store * Electronics Repair Shop * Antique & Jewelry Shop * Warehouse Each business has its own finances, reputation, inventory, operating policies, upgrades, incidents, and daily performance. Storefronts are not guaranteed passive income. Poor staffing, bad policies, incidents, operating costs, and poor purchasing decisions can all turn a location into a loss. Employees Purchased businesses can hire up to three employees. Employees have individual: * Appraisal * Negotiation * Reliability * Discretion * Traits * Wages * Experience Employees can be assigned as Managers, Buyer/Appraisers, or General Staff and improve as they work. Inventory Transfers Inventory can now be transferred between the Basement and your other businesses. Transfers take time, reserve storage at their destination, and may carry costs or risks. If a destination becomes unavailable while an item is being moved, the shipment can become Held in Transit, allowing you to return it, reroute it, or pay to hold it until space becomes available. Transaction History A new Transaction Ledger records the history of your deals. You can review: * Purchase price * Sale price * Profit or loss * Original estimated value * Confidence and findings at purchase * Risk * Customer/source * Buyer * Days held * Final result Importantly, the ledger preserves what you actually knew when you purchased the item rather than rewriting history after new information is discovered. Special Orders Contacts and customers can...Read full article on Community Announcements (blackwatergatordev)Patch NotesOfficial
Hotfix: Time Progression Fix
A hotfix has been released for Blackwater Exchange.A bug slipped into the latest build that caused the in-game clock to run significantly faster than intended, making each day much shorter than it should have been. This has now been fixed. What's fixed:Fixed an issue causing in-game time to progress too quickly.Day length now matches the intended pacing.The update is available now for Windows and Linux.The macOS build is currently being processed and will be available as soon as Steam finishes publishing it.Thanks to everyone who reported the issue, and apologies for the inconvenience. Your feedback helped identify and resolve the problem quickly.Read full article on Community Announcements (blackwatergatordev)
