Merek's Market vs Pixel Shopkeeper
Merek's Market
Merek's Market is a whimsical shop simulation game with time management elements, putting you into the running shoes of a shopkeeper in a medieval fantasy period where adventurers are aplenty. Craft and sell a huge variety of useful items, be it armor, weapons, potions, or even… pottery, serve your customers as quickly as possible, and try to upsell your items whenever they decide to haggle!As you play, the levels get increasingly more difficult, making that shiny gold rating a real achievement to get. The game also comes with a host of twists to its gameplay, spicing up the typical time management levels with mini-games and funny dialogues.
If you’re a fan of time management games, Merek’s Market offers the kind of gameplay you seek with a couple of nice twists, slathered with enough tongue-in-cheek humor to make you bark out a laugh once or twice on every level. Although I’ve not tried the game’s co-op, its single-player mode is already very entertaining to play, and challenging too, if you’re aiming for that shiny gold rating. Highly recommended!
Pixel Shopkeeper
Pixel Shopkeeper is a fun, indie shop simulation and management game where you head out to raid dungeons just so you can gather items to sell and then sell them at your very own shop. The looting system in this game is immensely challenging. It has a bit of inventory management that may bring to mind dungeon crawlers like Diablo, but unlike those games, this one employs a tetris-like gameplay. So, basically, you'll be trying to bring back as many items as you can by fitting each oddly-shaped items (like tetris pieces) into your square-shaped bag. You can purchase other bags later on as well. Different bags have different grid shapes, making fitting those items a bit more challenging than usual. Some even have special grids that will double or triple the number of the item that is placed over it.Featuring nostalgic pixel graphics, this game also has a rather unique "crafting system" - if you even can call it that - whereby you can combine lower-level items to create a higher quality and hence, more valuable item. This also means that you may find yourself re-running lower level dungeons just so you can gather enough items to do your crafting.
Being a simulation game, your shop is upgradable too. You can purchase better furniture such as display shelves, tables, or cases to place more items on display. Note that only displayed items can be sold. You can also polish the items while waiting for customers just so you can get extra cash from the "Shiny" bonus. The adventurers you sell your items to may have special quests for you from time to time. Oh, and don't forget to tap on them as they pass by your shop to encourage them to check out your wares!
Despite its simple, pixel looks, Pixel Shopkeeper is a surprisingly in-depth shopkeeping simulation game with some elements of RPGs. It's very entertaining to be able to farm dungeons for the items you sell and even turn them into more profitable goods. If you enjoy a good shop simulation game and you like idle-like RPGs, then this is a game you don't want to miss!