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I'd like to bring this cute little game to the attention of TL. You know the item shop owners in all the JRPG'S? The ones who unquestioningly buy your incredibly dangerous weapons? The ones who just happen to sell giant flaming swords in a simple beach town? It all seems a bit strange if you think about it, but this game seeks to make sense of it all.
Recettear is an adventure/capitalism simulator/rpg game in which you play as a young girl named Recette. Recette's father is an adventurer and one day leaves to become a great hero, leaving his young daughter at home to live by herself. As if that wasn't bad enough, he also left her completely responsible for his huge debt. Tear, a fairy debt collector, comes to Recette to collect a large sum of money her father owes her company. Unable to pay, Tear suggests Recette open up an item shop on the first floor of the house.
Rather than be offended by the fairy, Recette immediately sees her as a new best friend and enthusiastically converts her home to an item shop called "Recettear", an unfortunately misinterpretable name. So, that's the basic premise but what is the gameplay like?
One of the major components of Recettear is managing your item shop. Placing items near the display window draws attention, so you want to display only your finest wares there. You can later customize your shop as you level up as a merchant.
People come in your shop throughout the course of the day and will try to buy items. You determine the price on the spot, by increasing the base price. 30% is a fair amount but many of the townspeople are stingy and will barter for less. Bartering in this game is a bit of a mixed bag. If you don't budge, a customer might get angry and leave. But a customer may actually be willing to pay full price and is merely gauging you for a reaction.
So how do you get wares to sell in your shop? You can buy items at the market or at the merchants guild. The merchants guild offers various other services, but primarily sells adventuring gear for a low price. The town is a hub for aspiring heroes, so weapons and armor are very popular items.
There is one more method of obtaining items. That would be the zeldaesque adventure sequences. You see, various adventurers in the game will give you their card. Basically you help to gear them and assist them through various dungeons and you get to keep all the loot the monsters they slay drop. It's a pretty good deal.
Adventuring can be challenging. If you die in a dungeon, you only get to keep one item you looted and lose everything else. Not only do you lose all that potential loot to sell in your shop, but you've wasted a big slot of time you could have used to have your store open.
However, every month you must pay off a part of your fathers debt. If you don't bring in the money, you're going to end up having your home seized.
And no one wants to live in a box.
So let's talk about how to play the game. A translation company called Carpe Fulgur is currently localizing the game and it will be done this month! The game will cost 20 dollars for a full version but for you nasty pirates out there, it shouldn't be long before it's up on demonoid/tpb/bitgamer/whatever.
You can download the demo here - http://www.carpefulgur.com/recettear/demo.htm
The demo has maybe 2 hours of gameplay, or a bit more. I've completed the demo three times and although I barely made the debt the first time, I aced it well on the 2nd and 3rd tries. So I think this nifty game is worth a try. At the very least, the demo will waste a good 2 hours of your day and it's quite a bit of fun. Enjoy :3
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Holy shit, cute anime-style girl! (Goes and looks for demo)
Seriously though, looks really interesting, though most of your images don't seem to work for me.
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On August 05 2010 12:01 neobowman wrote:
Holy shit, cute anime-style girl! (Goes and looks for demo)
Seriously though, looks really interesting, though most of your images don't seem to work for me.
Images reuploaded.
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Wow! This sounds awesome! I really love the unique premise, how do you find these alternative games?
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On August 05 2010 12:11 BisuEver wrote:
Wow! This sounds awesome! I really love the unique premise, how do you find these alternative games?
I subscribe to a lot of indie game blogs/rpg blogs. I read about this particular game on RPGamer and was quite impressed. The blogosphere is a great way to find out about a lot of neat projects going on.
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Why aren't there more unique games like this from the JRPG sphere? Yes, a unlikely group of oddly dressed characters with unusual powers traveling the world in order to save it from the forces of evil with determination, cheesy lines, and over-the-top cinematics is appealing the first few times, but then after the 20th or so time, well...
Speaking of determination, does anyone else notice in anime/manga/JRPGs/anything-that-seems-to-come-out-of-Japan, determination > everything else, especially if the determined hero is bleeding to death against some ridiculously OP villain and all hope seems to be lost? Seriously, it's like the more one-sided a fight is against the hero, it only means that the hero will somehow manage to beat the villain to the pulp by 12 times the one-sidedness. AKA go Super Saiyan. [/rant]
But I'm glad there's at least one game in the genre attempting to really break the mold.
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On August 05 2010 12:28 The_Pacifist wrote:
Why aren't there more unique games like this from the JRPG sphere? Yes, a unlikely group of oddly dressed characters with unusual powers traveling the world in order to save it from the forces of evil with determination, cheesy lines, and over-the-top cinematics.
Speaking of determination, does anyone else notice in anime/manga/JRPGs/anything-that-seems-to-come-out-of-Japan, determination > everything else, especially if the determined hero is bleeding to death against some ridiculously OP villain and all hope seems to be lost? Seriously, it's like the more one-sided a fight is against the hero, it only means that the hero will somehow manage to beat the villain to the pulp by 12 times the one-sidedness. AKA go Super Saiyan. [/rant]
But I'm glad there's at least one game in the genre attempting to really break the mold.
You should keep an eye on what Carpe Fulgur is doing then. They plan to localize a lot more of these unique japanese indie games and possibly work with some bigger companies to localize big series that were never brought west. They seem to be a good company with a great work ethic.
I would make a Katawa Shoujo blog too but somehow I feel it wouldn't go over well. I'll probably do quite a few indie game blogs, there are a lot of great indie games that should be brought to TL's attention.
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Thanks for the info, I'll def check out the demo of this game. (I thought it was a visual novel at first , which I was kinda hoping for, but I guess not).
Oh man katawa shoujo lol, I've been looking forward to that game. Do you know how progress is moving along for it?
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On August 05 2010 13:13 Humbug wrote:
Thanks for the info, I'll def check out the demo of this game. (I thought it was a visual novel at first , which I was kinda hoping for, but I guess not).
Oh man katawa shoujo lol, I've been looking forward to that game. Do you know how progress is moving along for it?
It pretty much isn't. Four Leaf studios is pretty disorganized and it could be anywhere from a year to longer. The devs get pretty pissed if you ask anything about a release date but I hope they finish it up soon.
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Interesting, innovative and fun game. I ended up going mostly around 125%. When I open my own shop I will deny entry to all old men and little girls. Yeah, sure, you're running around with 1,000 pix to buy a long sword for an errand. Should be played with a gamepad for maximum enjoyment.
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ohhh these are the guys who did chantelise. i thought the art looked a bit familiar.
even though I'm a snobby elitist, its pretty cool that their trying to expand to western audiences.
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On August 05 2010 17:21 tissue wrote:
Interesting, innovative and fun game. I ended up going mostly around 125%. When I open my own shop I will deny entry to all old men and little girls. Yeah, sure, you're running around with 1,000 pix to buy a long sword for an errand. Should be played with a gamepad for maximum enjoyment.
I start at 130 with the old man, sometimes he takes it. The girl never goes above 18 or so percent and Louie will always accept 20. He'll complain sometimes but if you refuse to budge he'll agree.
You can also sell the walnut bread to your first customer for an infinite sum since she never gets mad and leaves. Each bargain makes her slightly more willing to pay a high price. I've sold it for 50k.
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On August 05 2010 17:56 ZoW wrote:
ohhh these are the guys who did chantelise. i thought the art looked a bit familiar.
even though I'm a snobby elitist, its pretty cool that their trying to expand to western audiences.
I believe carpe fulgur plan to localize chantelise sometime in the future as well.
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Saw this game featured in rockpapershotgun.com, it sure has an interesting concept
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On August 05 2010 22:50 BarneyEX wrote:
Saw this game featured in rockpapershotgun.com, it sure has an interesting concept
I read about it there too, after RPGamer. It's a great blog.
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i saw it on rock paper shotgun and indie games blog.
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This game is a lot of fun! Since it's just an English demo right now, when will it be released?
I try to go adventuring daily and keep getting killed. I try to skip all the monsters and go straight for the chests since monsters level with you anyway. Is it normally really difficult, does leveling make a big difference, or am I just bad?
I liked the explanation of the name Recettear in game: Recette and Tear combine to make Recettear which sounds like Racketeer. I know Homonyms/Homophones with double meanings are used a lot in Japanese and that's often hard to translate. Did the original Japanese name have a name like that too?
Thanks for sharing this cool game.
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On August 17 2010 03:35 ForSC2 wrote:
This game is a lot of fun! Since it's just an English demo right now, when will it be released?
I try to go adventuring daily and keep getting killed. I try to skip all the monsters and go straight for the chests since monsters level with you anyway. Is it normally really difficult, does leveling make a big difference, or am I just bad?
I liked the explanation of the name Recettear in game: Recette and Tear combine to make Recettear which sounds like Racketeer. I know Homonyms/Homophones with double meanings are used a lot in Japanese and that's often hard to translate. Did the original Japanese name have a name like that too?
Thanks for sharing this cool game.
The game will be released in early september.
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