I love shop sims. I do sometimes wonder what it says about me that I write about like, marxism for work and then go roleplay business for fun, but frankly I don’t have the time or energy to unpack that. Though if we could reconfigure things so that capitalism was only in video games I would call it a win for everyone.

Anyway, here’s some trading and shop games I enjoyed. Capitalism, ho!

(I waited too long to write these so some of them will be quite brief. Alas.)

Inside: Final Profit, Potion Permit, Winkeltje, Weapon Shop Fantasy, World End Diner, Potionomics, Amber Isle

Final Profit
(Brent Arnold, 2023)

Final Profit was a masterpiece. Certainly my favorite RPGmaker game of all time, possibly the best shop sim, and one of those games that just shows you what the medium can do when it’s in the hands of someone who understands it and has something to say. It’s also one of those great indies that is so deeply weird in such an original and fun way. I didn’t know I needed apple magic, but I did.

Final Profit is a fantasy shop sim about Biz, the Queen of the Fae. The faeries’ territory is being encroached on by human business, and their way of life is under threat — Biz can’t see any other option than a hail-mary ploy to take down capitalism from the inside. Against the wishes of the faerie council, she leaves to start her own shop, with the goal of rising to the top of the human corporate ladder and dismantling the entire system from within.

I really don’t want to spoil this game, but in addition to its central shop mechanics being fun, it’s just got great character writing and worldbuilding. I read somewhere that the dev actually sat in on business courses to get a better idea of how diehard capitalists think, and it really shows. In many ways the game is very on-the-nose in its satire, but in many it’s also quite subtle. So much thought and care has gone into every aspect of the world and every person you meet. And, as you and Biz both quickly find out, there’s no way to succeed in business without crushing people underneath you. Do the ends justify the means? Is Biz’s only responsibility to her own people? Will she just become what she hates? The game meaningfully and intelligently engages with all of these questions.

The limiting factor is that this is a shop sim for people who like shop sims — it’s often about minmaxing and can be delightfully difficult. I very much enjoyed that, but if you don’t like this genre, while I still think the game is worth experiencing, you may be a bit frustrated. Unfortunately I don’t remember how robust the accessibility options were. I’m realizing now it would have been in character for me to play on whatever the hardest mode was so there may be easier options, but I can’t recall.

I also think there have been some content updates since I played last year — and the dev announced a new game in the same universe for which I am quite excited.

Anyway,I loved this game and I’m desperate to talk about the ending with someone so please play it lol.

Potion Permit
(MassHive Media, 2022)

Potion Permit is a solid entry into the crafting RPG genre, with both life sim and shop sim elements. IMO it’s more crafting RPG than shop or life sim, but it does have a retail and town/friendship-romance mechanics and like many of these games the milestones are around revitalizing the town.

When I first got it it had mediocre reviews (they seem much better now), but personally I think it’s fine. It’s nice looking, I didn’t hit any bugs, and the central gameplay loop is fun and effective. I think it’s in that category of ‘if you like the genre you’ll like it, if you don’t you won’t.’ If you’re like me and enjoy this genre it’s worth playing — on the whole it’s one of the better indie entries, and it has a lot more meat than a lot of these games — I put 36 hours into it and ended up 100%ing it. But then, I’m also a fan of the grindy-gathery style of gameplay, so YMMV.

It’s also a very nice-looking game, with good UI design and appealing pixel art. I think its central premise of being a chemist sent to a town that distrusts you is a lot more original than many of these games, which tend to lean on the ‘washed up on the shore with amnesia’ trope, and means there’s actual stakes to the things you’re doing in a way which is, frankly, objectively better than ‘whelp I guess you live here now have fun.’ It’s also nice to see a game that’s willing to have townies dislike the PC and have you need to win the them over; I find the ‘everyone throws themselves at you’ version exhausting and boring.

My one criticism is that I wish the shop elements where more central. I found that I didn’t often need to make potions to sell, and really only engaged with the clinic on the random-event and story days. I would have preferred having to staff the store more, Recettear-style. But I think this is going to depend on what you get out of these games — I can see someone who prefers the life sim elements finding this way better and finding having to be in the store limiting.

Winkeltje: The Little Shop
(Sassybot, 2022)

This is a shop sim distilled down to its most basic elements, and I really liked it, but it’s definitely one where you have to like the central grind of a shop sim, lol.

I really enjoyed setting up the production chains and specializing in a certain kind of commodity; I liked how some of the materials that were central in one product type would be ancillary in another, letting you branch out. I wish more shop sims would take this approach since it’s realistic in a way I quite like.

I also liked the decorating options and large list of different aesthetics, though it did run into that problem that a lot of these have where decorations that give larger effect bonuses are just so far and away better that you end up having to use certain ones and others become chaff even if you like them aesthetically. I’m not completely sure how to fix this issue, to be honest — maybe something like a tag system, where having a certain quantity of deco items with a certain tag activates the bonus? This would give you more freedom to pick and choose instead of making the objectively best move from a gameplay perspective being just buying dozens of the highest-ROI deco item. But honestly even within that there was a lot of variety; I greatly enjoyed building out a department store where different sections were decorated completely differently. I also enjoyed being able to set up a little bedroom and sitting area for my person, as well as a little garden.

My only big complaint on the looks front is that there wasn’t near enough room! Creating enough space for the store, my living quarters, and a trophy room wasn’t really possible, and in the endgame when I would have liked to display the trophies I kind of just had to smush them all into an inaccessible area which was a little sad.

The other issue I had was that there were some items you couldn’t produce yourself that you really should have been able to — apples and wool come immediately to mind. Though I imagine this was at least in part a space limitation; I can’t imagine having had to make room for a little ranch area for sheep.

All in all this is for the more dedicated shop simmers but if that’s you it’s a real treat. It looks like the dev has released a new version/sequel called ‘Faire Trade’ — based on the devlog they realized that the improvements they wanted to make weren’t possible in the engine the game was using, so I look forward to seeing what they were able to do in the new version! I am sad they got rid of the name, though — Winkletje was so rustic-feeling and really unique in the genre, and ‘Faire Trade’ sounds like a generic mobile game.

Weapon Shop Fantasy
(Digdog Studio, 2017)

There ended up being a lot more to this game than I expected!

I went into it anticipating a pretty bare-bones incremental shop game, but instead got a surprisingly involved story about a vampire out for revenge opening a shop to pay off debt while balancing a political situation between two warring nations. All of the NPCs are named characters with backstories, and the gameplay has way more depth than I thought it would. I ended up feeling like it was a little gem in the indie shop sim scene.

It’s definitely a pretty basic gameplay loop — my memory is it all takes place on a single screen — but the care and odd depth to the story and setting take it above something like Anvil Saga. It reminds me a bit of Unholy Heights in that it takes the genre beats and makes then new again by caring a lot and doing something strange and unusual with them.

Unfortunately I played it a very long time ago and don’t have a ton more to say, but I still think about it fondly!

World End Diner
(Andymente, 2021)

Ah, World End Diner. I loved World End Diner. I also didn’t finish it — not even close. I also put over 50 hours into it. Those last two facts are related.

There’s a lot that’s wonderful about this game. The premise, of a robot starting a diner to serve sapient animals on a post-apocalyptic earth where humans extinct’d themselves is delightfully original, and the pixel art has such a unique aesthetic and feel. The vibe of the whole game is so unlike anything else, and the bits of lore and worldbuilding are so great. It simultaneously feels somber and comforting, like… the world ended, but it also kept going. Just spending time in it was enjoyable.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see all the lore, because progression is insanely slow. Like, mindbogglingly slow. I put fifty hours into this game and managed to get to level 12 out of 30. The reason I stopped play was because I had to admit to myself it just wasn’t going to be possible to see everything even though I wanted to — I just wanted to move on to other things. This biggest mistake I think the game makes is that it’s not set up to idle — if it was, I don’t think the slow progression would have been as big of an issue, but you have to be microing the diner at all times. I wish there had been an idle ‘mode’ where you could have the animals run the diner and buy ingredients at maybe like 50% profit. Else, the amount of exp needed for progression needed to be reduced by literally like 80%. And “you’ll realistically never see everything the game has to offer” makes it hard to recommend.

But honestly there were like a full 20 hours of gameplay where I 100% knew already that I wasn’t going to see the end but just loved the vibe. I played it a lot at night after work while watching TV. Just writing this review has made me want to play it again, and that’s honestly pretty impressive in and of itself. The dev has since released what looks like a sequel, Sky End Market, and I’m really looking forward to it.

…sadly it looks like the developer has turned to AI for their latest game, and it’s just so… bleak. The assets are all that soulless, blandly ugly AI schlock art, and it’s so depressing to see that replace the unique look World End Diner had. They’re apparently also using AI to program, which leads me to a great question I once saw someone pose: Why would I want to play a game no one wanted to make? It’s a shame, a real shame.

Potionomics
(Voracious Games, 2022)

I don’t know if this game is ugly or if it’s just a style I personally don’t like, but either way I was put off by how it looked for a long time before trying it, only to find out it was actually a real gem. The vibe is like… direct-to-video knockoff of modern 3D Disney movie, lol? I just find it really ugly. But it was a really good game!

This is the one I played the longest ago, but briefly: Potionomics is a Recettear plot with a real time limit — you have to win potion contests in order to progress, so you have only so long to make potions that can win while also running the business. I really liked the characters and thought the cast was fun and unique — my one real complaint was that there’s no freeplay after you clear the story, so you can’t see all the character interactions, which kind of sucked.

I thought the time limit struck a good balance between adding stakes and not being too punishing to be accessible, although my memory is I finished the last task pretty early. Still, I recognize not everyone is a crazy person who plays tons of these games, and on the whole I thought it was balanced quite well.

I do think in the lategame there was the problem that you ended up using the same ingredients over and over — there were ingredients that were obviously ‘the good ones’ and it meant there wasn’t a lot of room for creative problem solving — because of number limits you couldn’t like, brute force things by putting a ton of shitty ingredients in. It meant the puzzle of each potion often only had one real solution.

But the plot and character interactions were really the highlight here, if you even kind of like this style of game this is a good one to pic up for worldbuilding and cute interactions more than for the gameplay.

Amber Isle
(Ambertail Games, 2024)

I was pleasantly surprised by this game. I’ve become pretty cynical of farm/life sims (as I’ll get to if I ever finish the farm sim post…) as a lot of them rely on the ‘cozy’ buzzword and don’t bother with actual gameplay. But this was a really fun shop sim with a huge stock of items to craft and a surprisingly large map with dozens of townies. Also dinos are cool.

The premise here is that for their coming-of-age, adolescent dinos go on a journey of self-discovery to figure out what they want to do with their lives and get to know the world. Once their mentor thinks they’re ready, they can choose a surname (“saurname”) for themselves and are officially adults, which is very cute. Unfortunately for you, your boat crashed and you wash up on Amber Isle, where the curmudgeonly mayor puts you in charge of the local shop because there’s no one else to do it and you need to earn your keep.

Like I said, the thing that impressed me most about this game was how big it was, in terms of shop mechanics, furniture, items you could sell, and crafting; as well as in terms of the map and number of people to recruit. I put 35 hours into it and was not really even close to unlocking all the recipes; I stopped playing after I finished the main story and fully upgraded the town.

It also had something I like in shop sims, which is there’s always something to spend money on, whether it’s decorations or new recipes or retooling your shop layout. I hate when shop sims make it easy to hoard money, and I think the best ones set it up so even if it’s totally optional there’s technically always something you could use your resources on.

Honestly this is one of my favorite ones I’ve played in a long time, and is definitely a general rec for anyone who even tangentially likes this genre. The game is still getting post-1.0 content (including a recent overhaul to the character creator) so it’s definitely worth checking out!