Inception

After stopping work on my first 'published' game Ferrum Man, I had plenty of ideas for games, but I did several prototypes and none stuck. Then, tale as old as time, I played some good games and thought "wait, what if I did this, but with my own spin on it?" This is known as making a 'clone' or 'game-like' to some. Normally I would cast aside such an idea, but I really thought I could do something that would be fun and fairly unique, plus it's a niche genre that needs more games. That is, the Shop Management and Dungeon Crawl genre combo. Before I got serious though, I needed to take some notes and see what there was to do. This process would take a couple of weeks, not taking it too seriously.

Notetaking & Research

(about 800 lines of notes)

This game without a name has 3 main games it takes inspiration from:

• Recettear
• Moonlighter
• Touhou Mystia's Izakya

While playing those games I took note of how they were structured and after I was done I wrote a short essay to myself explaining my thoughts on why it did or didn't work. I then started hashing together my own structure based off my notes, estimating how it would shape up. Here's a sum of what I thought of each game as well as the original essay:

Recettear

Good game overall. Music is fun but can be repetitive. Double genre allows each to breath a bit, making them have longer staying power than if on their own. Selling to customers is really fun at first, but it becomes a bit stagnant once you realize 90% of the time it's 120% markup to get the near pin bonus without haggling. This is important since shop sales combo is imperative to getting level ups quickly. Game also lies a bit and doesn't explain all the mechanics, which is a double edged sword. On one hand, being blind it's more fun if you figure it out yourself, on the other you're gimped unless you come in with knowledge from a friend.

Moonlighter

Falls short, somewhat unenjoyable game. Music is forgetful, but it isn't bad either. Shop mechanics are incredibly boring and or useless. You have to guess the base price of items and just hope it's the right amount. You can use some details for an educated guess, but it doesn't make it any less tedious. Thieves exist, but they yell at you that they're a thief when they enter, and you just roll into them to get rid of them. You get an assistant, they are beyond useless. The shop is real time, it's mostly waiting and doing nothing. Dungeon gameplay is much more robust. I dare say it was fun at times, though the upgrade path made it feel a bit weird balance wise for me. 

Mystia's Izakya

Fun, fairly casual and a fanservice game. Music is orchestral touhou, kinda. Rather than a dungeon, this game puts the action in the shop and has a low stakes gathering/town exploration mode. Shop has an assistant that is actually useful, semi interesting upgrades. Game logic and data is transparent, makes it easy to double check something before making some food for a special customer if you want to. Shop is fairly casual to start, you can choose the difficulty, which also increases your possible profit. Walking around town and talking is pretty fun, though it's a bit rough at times since it's a Chinese to English translation. It's also leaning into how it's a touhou game, so if you're completely unawares of it you'll be missing out on references and whatnot.

The Game Idea Itself

After and during that note process, I began writing down my thoughts on what kind of game mine would be. I didn't save what I had back then, so here's an approximated summary:

Aspects from Recettear: Majority of shop system, including bartering, customization, customers, supply/demand, etc. Time wedges and day/night cycle. 

Aspects from Moonlighter: Inventory style, real time shop, thieves, cased tables, the bigger focus on the dungeon gameplay. 

Aspects from Mystia's Izakya: Good assistants, customer patience meter, activities to keep busy while running shop. Transparent game mechanics and built in 'wiki' journal/compendium.

Vague Ideas of my Own: Game will use 2D hand drawn assets,  top down visuals. Vaguely fantasy, unsure if medieval, scifi, or something else. Shop is real time, dungeoneering is turn based like a roguelike(or vice versa). The idea is that turn based gameplay would add a rest between the action of running the shop. Advertising, can rotate shop furniture, have to manually store items, player freedom to pull out a weapon and kill someone in your shop. A whole bunch of other stuff that would be impossible to implement within 100 years.

By this time I decided to choose a codename for the project since I was starting to get attached. I like to use quick codewords rather than a real name, so that I don't get hung up on it. I ended up naming it Project Pecunia, pecunia being Latin for money. I thought it apt given the game's about making money, and it being the first game I plan to eventually sell.

(only screencap of my notes from the time)

After

At this point I planned to use the same engine as last time, Godot Engine, focusing on the storefront elements first. Although exciting, I knew it would probably be a long road to completion, let alone a prototype.