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A jam submission

EtherwestView game page

Like Recettear and Moonlighter.
Submitted by Wierdox — 2 days, 23 hours before the deadline
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Etherwest's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Hey Wierdox!

Here's a video of me checking out your game:

https://mega.nz/file/jYFxRD6R#Pd3vSndGhrG3U65nuguN3Y5LhyYuzFHXG0DjjXfkNY4

I am not very familiar with shopkeeping simulators, but I hope you're going to get something out of my video and commentary.

Developer

Thanks, I appreciate you playing as long as you did given the state of the game. Doubly so, for having no experience in this genre. I'll try my best to make the tutorial a non cluster of nonsense next time, as well as have more gameplay. One word of note though, your mic was really quiet. Even boosting it, it was hard to understand at times. 

Hope you can have fun by next time.

Submitted

I'm happy I could help.

your mic was really quiet

yeah, I was watching my videos at like 200% volume in VLC. My mic in OBS was already at max, and I even added gain filter. I am going to need to figure out what else I can do to make it louder for next DD.

(+1)

what you have so far works well! there's a couple of tiny things in terms of presentation, such as the text boxes being pretty transparent on a strong-color background with white text, and similar things.

i liked that there was various flavor text depending on the price of things, it's very charming

encountered no major issues playing the web version.

keep up the good work and be sure to submit again!

lastly

>Bibble

You question the words of the mighty Jimmy??

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing, hope to make a lot of progress for the big 50!

Submitted(+1)

Seems like you're off to a good start! 

It took a while process what was going on in the scene since it's mostly placeholder tiles but all the interactions made sense.

I haven't played recettear, but I really liked Moonlighter so I might be biased when I say I liked being able to price items when they're placed on display over haggling each individual at the counter. I guess it makes more sense to haggle when buying from people who walk in tho.

Played about 20 minutes with controller, only ran into one problem when the controls locked up (might've been out of stuff to sell, unsure, I just sold a bible at 120% which was the first time I changed the decimal value)

(You should change "pie cookie" to "cookie pie" cause it sounds cuter ;)

Good luck on your game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for giving it a try, I appreciate it. 

>might be biased when I say I liked being able to price items when they're placed on display over haggling each individual

As it stands that would make sense, but it'll be more fun when there's multiple types of customers as well as when I add moods, sale bonuses, and supply/demand. Though I will consider the possibility of doing a Moonlighter, it just didn't feel compelling to sell items like that when I played it myself. That other suggestion though sounds cute, I'll rename the item for next time :p

Submitted(+1)

Barebones but a good starting point. As a recettear fan I'm happy someone tries to bring back the merchant experience (after the blunder of moonlighter). Dunno where are you aiming for this project, but if you wanna sell it, I suggest you to play many runs of recettear and moonlighter to see where to go and what to avoid devwise.

I'll play  your demo for sure next DD. 

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks for playing, I'll try my best to meet expectations. I played Recettear and Moonlighter both a while back and wrote notes, but I should probably do so again so it stays fresh in my mind, thanks for the reminder.

Submitted(+1)

Seems to work as intended! I played it downloaded, sold some pie and bibles. Eventually the keys stopped responding when I alt tabbed in and out a few times.

Developer

Thanks for playing and the feedback. I'll try to sus out that bug you found, though I'm a bit surprised given I have nothing connected to ALT or TAB in controls besides the Storage inventory sorting switch.

Submitted

Maybe I fat-fingered something else too... Also the game is always on top of other windows in Windows.

Developer

>Also the game is always on top of other windows in Windows.

woops! That was done for easier debug, I'll undo that in a bit, thanks for bringing it up.

(+1)

I was expecting this to be a 3D Reccetear-like, kind of disappointed that it'll be 2D, but it doesn't really affect the Gameplay all that much I guess.

That the Game doesn't pause or slow down or anything while haggling makes it very unattractive to do so, since you'll loose customers if you aren't fast enough. Makes Sense ofcourse, but maybe have the Prices be fixed and decided by you in the morning then? Customers seem to swarm in pretty rapidly, and not really look around for long, kind of like they decided what to buy before coming in already. The few that do seem to run around rather nonsensically, with some of them moving behind the Shelf in the Front instead of looking at Items.

With how it currently is, the Text for haggling and buying/selling seems pretty hard to read, but of course that is all Placeholders. I also don't know if you have any Logic in Place for what kind of Items Customers buy/sell based on whats displayed or whatever, but everyone seemed to want Pie and get rid of Godot.

Made it through 4 Days before getting Stuck on the counter and not being able to do anything anymore. I'm assuming its because a Customer tried to buy nothing or something like that, because I didn't have the Item in Stock, but there might be another Reason as to why I'm stuck in a State without Input Options. For what its worth, the only changed flag is IsStopped on true, the rest is default false/0. Game also continued as normal, with a Bunch of Customers lining up without anything to buy, running out of Time and leaving. 

I don't think there's much else to do yet. You can walk out the Shop into nothingness forever tho.

Developer(+1)

> I was expecting this to be a 3D Reccetear-like

Funny you say that, there WILL be 3D, in one way or another, depending on how pure 2D works out. For now I'm going to follow a prerendered 2D look for the characters and enemies, probably for the environment tiles too. If I have too many troubles with making it look good(lighting in particular), I'll probably take the plunge and upgrade to Godot4 as well as transition to a 3D world. At which point I'll either go full 3D or still use sprites for the characters like Recettear. Of course, I need to actually make the game first and make sure it's fun before I do that.

>That the Game doesn't pause or slow down

Yeah, I'm going for a real-time version with several other gameplay mechanics that require moving about to keep a little pressure on. Of course the biggest issue is balancing it so it doesn't get crazy so quick. I'll probably have to invest a lot of time in the spawning mechanism for that to feel balanced though.

>don't know if you have any Logic in Place for what kind of Items Customers buy ... everyone seemed to want Pie and get rid of Godot.

heh. Though in seriousness, yeah that's on the menu of things to add. Though it should've been randomized for the purchases. I'll look into that because now that I think about it, my playtesting almost always sold pizzas first every time.

>Made it through 4 Days before getting Stuck ... its because a Customer tried to buy nothing

Thanks for the bug(reproduced it), forgot to test what would happen if there were no items available. Now I need to decide how to handle that, either breaking the combo or causing the shop to close early. Now if your customer DID have an item held, then it would be worse than I thought. Currently the player pausing is a super sketchy bool that is toggled via signal in several places, and has the potential of being swapped to the wrong bit. Though I haven't tested that thoroughly. 

>I don't think there's much else to do yet.

Thanks for playing and giving good feedback as usual, I'll try to add as much game as I can next DD.

Submitted(+1)

Project Pecunia with Controller, played 12min (2 days).

UI isn't optimal. Needs UI sounds, and focused mode from the buttons is insufficiently different from normal mode.
There's a bug where I couldn't put down or merge underwear (I could put them in storage though), I added a webm in the /agdg/-thread. Happened after I tried a lot of inventory movements to break your inventory system.
Boxes for dialog are too transparent, it's hard to see what is said at a glance.
Moving the cost with the stick is very hard (maybe only allow the arrow keys).
Hard to distinguish between selling and buying. Unclear what the stages of the haggling process are.
Movement of the customers is good, player character feels a little slow to me.

Looking forward to the future of your recettear-like.

Developer

Great feedback, thanks for playing. I'll be sure to work on all listed issues and more in due time. 

Submitted(+1)

I see that you have normalized movement, that's a good thing to have. The looking system seems odd to me, but I don't have a better suggestion. 

Developer

Thanks for giving it a try while it's so barebones. The looking is currently pointless, it will be usefull once I add the gun and robbers to shoot.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

needs more responsive and intuitive ui

Developer

By responsive, do you mean literally like it feels laggy to select things? Or do you mean it needs to change in reaction to input better somehow?

Submitted

I don't know what im interacting, what the items do

like where am i placing items

just give more info to the player

Developer

Good point, it's more vague than it ought to be.