Reccettear: An RPG Item Shop Simulation

So, RPS had a recent “update” on a game called "Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. The goofy ass name is made up of two character’s names “Recette” and “Tear” and there is some wackiness that eludes to “racketeer”. The original article can be seen here.

It is a 2007 Japanese game that simulates running an item shop for city folk and adventurers. Stocking food, weapons, armor, etc. Additionally, you can sort of hire and follow adventures into basic, hack n’ slash dungeons. You can then equip them with gear you find and/or bring it back to sell in your shop. You do NOT get gold in the dungeons as far as I can tell.

Your motivation for making money is a debt on the shop owed by your recently deceased father. There are all kinds of extra RPG bits in there and various locales in the city that develop a backstory and allow youo to buy and sell with other merchants. The demo runs for 8 in-game days and you can get a pretty good feel for the game.

I thought the demo was a ton of fun. I love this kind of sim. I think there was one called Apothecary (or something) for some smartphone that looked great, but I could never get to work. Anyway, if it was available now, I would have already purchased it.

THe game was localized by an American company (Carpe Fulgur) that wants to bring niche games like this over to the English speaking world. Some on the RPS crew seemed to enjoy the demo so much, they tracked down the dudes at Carpe Fulgur and interviewed them.

THe recent update reveals the September release date and a $15 Euro/$20 price tag.

Demo here.

Please take a look and begin your dispersion casting.

Looks interesting. One of my favorite games on my old pocketpc was a game called artificer (probably the game you were thinking of) where you crafted artifacts in a shop. Then you sold them to adventures. The fun came in that you could set the price but you got experience from their use (and lost exp if they died), so you had to strike a balance between selling lots and making money. There was also only a limited number of heroes so you wanted them as equipped as possible while also giving you money.

It’s 50/50 store management and dungeon crawling, says their own Web site.

THAT’S IT!! Artificer, not Apothecary. Is there a way to get that to run on a PC. Last time I looked, I could find nothing.

Well, I am focusing on the shopping. :)

not that i know of. I couldn’t even find any sort of official site for the game anymore.

Loved the demo, loved the fact the speech stuff is skippable. Cant wait for launch.

I played the demo a few weeks ago, and I enjoyed it so much that I played it again. I wasn’t too impressed by the dungeon part, but the rest of the game seems like a lot of fun.

I’m definitely getting it, once it’s released.

I will be buying this.

I’ll be buying it on release even if I won’t have the time to play it for quite a while. The demo was very well done, and I’d like to see this group continue their localization work.

How do you get out of the dungeon without dying?

I hate how fucking chatty it is.

Dungeons have exits every five floors that, once used, can also pop you out at the same point when you return.

Loved the demo for this as well. It’s nice to be on the other side of the ripoff 50% vendor trash transaction.

Atelier Annie for the DS has a main character who is an alchemist who crafts items to sell in her shop. She also enlists the help of more combat-oriented friends to gather crafting supplies, and as a bonus, she also is in charge of renovating and running a resort town. You get to choose if the town what attractions the island will build and who will be in charge of them, and supply them to improve their rating.

The only thing I didn’t like about it is that everything was timed (in terms of days, basically turns), and I could easily get distracted by crafting and end up missing the deadlines for stuff.

GRR i hate those little girls! I can’t sell anything to them even at 125% markup most of the time…

I liked the demo quite a bit. The keyboard controls were kind of strange at best, but i got out my gamepad which i already had attached and it worked like a charm.

I barely made the first payment due to some bad haggling early on, but managed to end with 5,000 post payment after some big ticket purchases from both customers and the guild master paid off.

I might have to start again to check out dungeons.

This sounds like an awesome premise for a game (and made me think immediately of Majesty, which was also about supplying the infrastructure needed by RPG heroes). Will check out the demo when I get home. Thanks for the heads-up, Tyjenks!

Oooh, cool. Had heard of the game, but was not aware of that facet. Thanks Angie.

The dungeoning could certainly use some more spice, but 5 levels can be run through rather quickly.

I like the time mechanism by which you have to make decisions as to how to spend each day. DO you stay in the shop and try to sell? DO you go to the dungeon early or late? Do you venture out and pick up some merchant or bazaar items to sell later in the day?

Then there is the merchant leveling, which you do not get into too much, but it appears those collectible ingredients allow you to do something.

Don’t you mean Atelier Annie?

Wasn’t Eternal Mana the first atelier iris on the ps2?

The website makes it look like “Annie” is the one. I am going to have to track it down now.

Anyone know of any other, similar games? Especially those weighted more heavily toward the sim side and not so much the combat.

EDIT: Also, more kudos to RPS for digging up things that do not come up on the other sites I frequent. There are a few indie sites I visit that have mentioned Recettear, but not at times when I visited, which is much less frequently than RPS. I go there at least daily.

That was my experience as well. I wish I could keep that riff raff out of the store.

LOVE the demo, thanks. Looking forward to the release date now! I agree that the dungeon part is weak, so far, but it may open up a bit as the game progresses. It isn’t the main draw anyway. I do wish this where a DS release though. It would be excellent as a portable.

I just hope the Carpe Fulgur folks keep to their intentions and continue their localization of such games.

They would not do something of this scope, but I would love an MMOG where I could actually BE a shop owner who only crafts and sells with a real economy with varied goods and not one that requires a F2P item shop model. By varied I mean one that does not have a 10 tiered item system where each successive tier simply adds +1 strength to the item. Oh, and not all grindy and shit. That is not too specific, is it? I bet there is an enormous, untapped market for a game like that. ;)

Yeah, yeah, A Tale in the Desert and Ryzom and that other one that has changed developers 8 times where you can be a dragon do not remotely qualify. Ultima Online was, I think, as close as anyone has come, IIRC.

That really deserves another thread, but the concept is not quite deserving enough as only 2% of the board would have any interest and, of those, the majority are lurkers.

Oh, and you are all welcome. +1 for me. Now I can sell crafted items from dungeon ingredients.

EDIT: Also, the dialog was certainly more clever than 99% of translated Japanese titles (I know, low bar) I have encountered and had references for English audiences. I genuinely enjoyed some parts of the banter. The crap stuff you can still skip.

EDIT II: One more thing if you had not noticed, it appears that the distributor they finally convinced is Stardock. I am happy to run more business through there.