Author: Sir Ducky (Derek)
Date: 6/3/2023
| Become a Shop Owner |
I’m a huge fan of Rogue-Likes… It’s addicting doing multiple “runs” while attempting to win against the multitude of random elements that you’ll encounter. No two runs will ever be the same and even if they feel similar to one another, a successful Rogue-Like will add enough diversity through its items, abilities, and “opponents” to keep you repeatedly playing the game. As the genre grows in popularity, developers are finding ways to implement unique ideas and themes into their games, which is leading to some interesting and fun entries into the long list of Rogue-Likes. From the Isometric Fairy Tale Freedom Fighters of Ravenswatch to the 3D Open World Magically Medieval Ravensbound, this year has already created some new, never before seen renditions in the genre.
Rogue-Likes are normally quite simple in terms of content and thrive off of their replayability through the features mentioned above. This is exactly what Shop-Like - The Rogue-Like Item Shop Experience (Yes, that is the full title) does with their unique take on running a shop in a medieval, faction-based setting. Your goal is to successfully run a shop over the course of a set number of days in order to pay off the loan that you were granted.
You’ll use a variety of methods to min/max your profit on a daily basis in order to pay off the loan by the last day, otherwise, you’ll find yourself going bankrupt and living on the street. As a concept, this really spoke to me considering I’m a numbers nerd… Spreadsheets are my passion so I felt like I'd be able to quickly master the mechanics of Shop-like.
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| How To Run Your Shop |
You may be asking yourself how a shopkeeper game could possibly pass as a Rogue-like and the best answer I can give is: it's complicated. I want to state that I do enjoy this game and it was a great break after playing Lord of the Rings: Gollum for 2 hours. I found myself having a blast while I was falling into a hole of number-crunching, probability, and strategy.
The reason that I say, “it’s complicated”, is that there is a lot to manage in order to properly navigate all the features. It isn’t as straightforward as your typical combat-based Rogue-Like. You have to be aware of all the different resources at your disposal in order to make any progress toward cutting down your debt. In fact, it took me 6 runs to pay off my loan on the first shop, which I’m assuming is the easiest. I love how in-depth it gets, however, I definitely feel like the menu navigation could use some polish, especially since the game is entirely baked into menu selections. It quickly gets cluttered and sometimes feels like a web game, which… if this was a web game, I would be quite impressed with it!
There is a lot to manage, between the items you are selling, the buffs and debuffs that rotate each day on the newspaper, your relationships with the customers, your relationships with the factions, the abilities that each faction offers, and the alternative methods of making money through the bank, and that's just scratching the surface. When you approach each run, how you play will change massively just on how you sell your items and whether you choose to sell for less profit in an attempt to raise your appeal with factions and customers, or sell for a higher profit in order to raise your funds at the start of the game and quickly expand your inventory. I don’t really know the best option, but in the run that I won, I made sure to get on the customer’s good side… and it paid off in the end (literally).
On top of this, as you successfully sell items, your shop levels up, granting you a choice between 3 randomized specialized cards that will each grant you a buff. This is just one of the many RNG layers that the game adds to its Rouge-Like components, and with every unique layer, you begin to multiply the variety of run styles at your disposal, and Shop-Like does a fantastic job by being as in-depth as it is.
I have yet to play any run the same way twice and the only similarity the runs shared was the fact that I was purchasing items and selling them which... should be expected as that is the main point of the game. If you want to learn more about the customer’s shopping at your store, then you should grow your relationship with the Heroes' Guild. If you want to manipulate your customers into spending more money, then you should grow your relationship with the Shadow Clan while also selecting a specific card that raises every customer’s buying threshold. I could go on about all the different methods and opportunities to grow your shop but it's best that you experience it for yourself.
For the first portion of your experience in Shop-like, you'll be exploring the different faction benefits (the game even recommends it) and I would highly suggest that you do exactly this. Shop-Like’s tutorial is lackluster and doesn’t do the best job of explaining how to navigate the world, but it lays the foundation and puts the exploration in your hand. I will note that the game doesn’t save its settings in between each run, which resulted in me having to disable the tutorial, as well as needing to put the game back into fullscreen due to it auto-minimizing into windowed mode. This was a slight annoyance at best as it didn’t break the game in any way, but I hope that it is on the developer’s radar because I can see this bothering a less patient person. As I mentioned above, the game needs a lot of polishing, but its foundation is great.
The last feature that I should mention is how each day works. Simply put, each day allows for a certain amount of interactions, ranging from selling items to visiting town. You are able to see how many customers you have at the start of each day, so you can plan your other actions around that number accordingly as you’ll want to make sure you cycle through all of your customers.
The time feature is crucial for making this game work as it adds a “control” variable into the mix. It is something that you can always expect to work around and is necessary to take into consideration to give you the best chance at min/maxing your profit.
| Make Sure You Pay Off Your Loan |
If you are looking to increase your library of Rogue-Likes and you are a number aficionado like me, then I would definitely recommend that you check out Shop-Like. The developer (Rand.exe Studios) has already confirmed that they will continue pushing out improvements for the game, so I’m sure we can expect to see some polishing and possibly new features. It’s a great game to play on the side and once you gain an understanding of what each faction offers, the navigation complications dip and you will start to craft complex strategies and synergies to get the most bang for your buck. We enjoyed our time in Shop-Like and please feel free to let us know in the comments below what you thought of the game. If you have any questions, drop them there and we'll be happy to answer.
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Disclaimer:
We did receive this game free for review. Please note that we have not been paid or promoted for this review, and are not affiliated with Shop-Like - The Rogue-Like Item Shop Experience or its developers officially in any way. All thoughts are based on our own genuine experience of the game. All footage is based on the Game in its current state as of 06/03/2023 and is subject to change or be completely omitted in future patches at the developer's discretion.
I am a novice when it comes to rogue-likes. The idea of managing a store is the part that is drawing me in and can see it creating a gameplay loop worth repeating.
Having read a few of your reviews so far, I will be adding this and a couple other games to my wishlist based on your review.