Shop Management Bite Sized Reviews

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Shop Management Bite Sized Reviews

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Tue Oct 20, 2015 2:23 am

So, after playing a little bit of Fortune's Tavern, Shoppe Keep, Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop and Spatials, I'd like to review them in a bundle, just like the Space 4x's. For the sake of comparison, I'll also be constantly referencing Recettear as it's an exemplar of this kind of game. Anyways, let's get it on.

Shoppe Keep:
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I have a suggestion for an alternate title to this game: How Potion Seller Sold His Most Powerful Potions, because that's what you spend the first hour or so of this game doing. Just selling potions. This bad boy is an Early Access game, where you manage a shop and spend most of your time killing thieves while taxes clock in twice a day. You order supplies from some mysterious netherrealm that drops a chest into the back room so you can throw the stock up front. There are expansions to the shop and some things are being added, but for the most part its big flaw is that it's far too simple, and there's really no end goal in sight. You just restock the front, sweep up the place because every motherfucker has mud caked on their boots, then just wait.

As an aside, because it's from a first person perspective, I once looked down to check out dirt on my floor and what did I see? An arrow. Protruding from my shoppe keeper's knee. I hope you can picture the unamused frown on my face that threatened to suck the entirety of the universe into it when I saw that. In fact, there are a ton of references to Skyrim in this game, and I think it would do the devs a favor to cut that out, because those jokes aren't funny anymore.

It's too basic, is what I'm saying. There's no skill to it, no endgoal, no challenge. Just 'sell stuff until you get bored and turn the game off'. It needs more to it. In all fairness, the devs are updating it regularly and even added in a few new aspects, but there's still just too much missing from the base game, at the moment. Recettear has combos, different kinds of customers who are receptive to different kinds of shop atmosphere with different tolerances for bartering and differing amounts of money. It has a questline of sorts on the side, and heroes you can bring with you to dungeons to get items. There needs to be more in this game before it can quite measure up. Also, there's no grid placement here, so if you're like me and you like your furniture perfectly symmetrical and aligned, this game will drive you absolutely fucking nuts.

Fortune's Tavern:
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This one is an RPGMaker game. Whereas in some of these you run an RPG shop, you run a JRPG tavern here. I'm not going to lie, I clocked in about 3 hours (most of it when my internet was out) and got really bored of it. It's a nice little idea, but the problem is that it's just spreadsheets and then going on quests where your pet does all the fighting for you. Just like Shoppe Keep, it's far too shallow. Also, it's the only one on this lists where the sidequesting overtakes the shop management, which is a huge red flag. I'd recommend giving this one a miss.

Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop!
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This one has you running a weapon shop (as the name points out) in a world of spud people. That's right, everyone's potatoes and you barter using...starch. Anyways, your grandfather died and you take over his shop while his 'business partner' Agent 46 (yes, there are metric tons of references in this game) has you paying loans to him. You start with three crafters: Bulk Bogan, Laura Craft and Russel Peters. Each has their strengths, and you have to use those strengths when crafting weapons to ensure that the desired stats on the weapon are met.

In the outerrealm, you can sell your merchandise, buy supplies, go hunting for stuff and send your spuds on vacation. Your shop automatically expands as you move to new areas, and the equipment you buy allows for increasing amounts of smiths to help at each station. You can eventually get new hires, and I was surprised to see a potato version of Winry Rockbell of FMA fame on my first lineup, and I got the distinct impression the game was trying to placate me to make me play longer(Alphonse Elric also makes an appearance, weirdly enough). All in all, while there isn't a ton of depth to the game (for all its features, it still comes down to 'make this weapon with the desired stats'), it's engaging enough that it keeps me interested. If there's one thing I would complain about, it's that the Agent makes you pay him based on quests completed, not money or time. If you're like me and you like to fully upgrade everything before moving on, you'll end up completing a quest and then having to pay him twice in a row because you've already hit the mark for the next ten quests behind it and now you're broke. Of the games that aren't Recettear, this one is probably the best.

In comparison to Recettear, this one limits most of the customer interaction, which is a shame. It feels a bit closer to Shoppe Keep, in that while you have to give money to Agent 46, you're never really feeling too pressured to do so. You give money at your own pace, so there's no carrot hanging in front of you to make you do stuff. In Recettear, you have to make X money in a week, and if you don't, you lose. That's a carrot and a half.

Spatials:
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I was hesitant on whether or not to even add this game to the list. It plays out closer to Rollercoaster Tycoon than a shop management game, but you do have an ungodly amount of workforce dedicated to crafting shit for visiting spacefarers to buy (it's what the game revolves around), so I guess it counts. The idea is you build a space station that's basically a pit stop for passing wayfarers. As you unlock more stuff, you build your station out and try to keep everything close to the landing pad(s) because they'll only be there for a certain amount of time. You keep a dedicated crew to send to all the planets to do missions, and at each planet you're given the option to have a recurring set of resources sent to the station every (x) amount of minutes ('x' being how many people you dedicate to harvesting in that system).

All in all, it's interesting, and it's the only complete game on the list that the devs are updating with new content. For the most part, though, it is very much a borderline mobile game, and the missions are basically nothing but cowclicker missions. I won't compare this one to Recettear, simply because while it's loosely the same kind of game, it's too different to really get into a comparison. This is the only one besides Holy Potatoes I would give a recommendation to.
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Doodle Dee. Snickers
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