Craftlands Workshoppe vs Pixel Shopkeeper
Craftlands Workshoppe
Craftlands Workshoppe is a tycoon-like game that’s filled with fun adventures. In this game, you’ve inherited the workshoppe of your mentor, Allcrafts – the only master craftsman who managed to master all the craftmanship skills available, and your goal is to revitalize his workshoppe business and maybe make a name for yourself!The gameplay here is pretty much what I’d expect of a “grind simulator”. What this means is that the game, being a tycoon, requires you to gather resources or buy them, turn them into more valuable goods via crafting, and then sell them off at a nice profit margin - though you don’t have much say as to how much you can price your items. Rinse and repeat.
The game lets you choose between 3 starting professions, namely Alchemy, Cook, and Blacksmith, and from there, you can earn enough to purchase licenses to unlock the other professions. The goal here is for you to master them all. There’s actually a fourth profession, which unlocks the Assembly table, but that can only be obtained once you’ve completed a milestone quest.
Crafting is fairly easy for both Alchemy and Cooking since it either involves waiting out the cooking time or making sure to spend enough energy to brew the potion properly. However, for blacksmithing, there’s a little mini-game that you’ll need to play in order to make an item. Basically, there will be a fast-moving indicator on a meter and your goal is to click whenever it enters a green area on the said meter. If you miss, you’ll have to start over, wasting all the effort and energy you might have spent.
In short, Craftlands Workshoppe is a rather grindy tycoon-like adventure game that has a pretty humorous streak. Due to how grindy it can get, the game might just not be everyone’s cup of tea. However, if you’ve always had a liking for crafting-based tycoons and the idea of managing your own shop, and that you don’t mind spending hours just grinding away gathering materials, crafting items or selling goods, then this game should be right up your alley!
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!