What Makes A Great In-Game Shop?
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- Опубликовано: 22 фев 2024
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Game shops don't get enough love. Sure, you can design a game shop as a simple exchange of money for stuff, but they can be so much more. A center for bartering and negotiating. A place to meet new characters and uncover game story details. A system of chance that can make or break a run in a roguelike. All the way up to game mechanics so detailed that they become the entirety of the game. Let's talk about how to design fun game shops.
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An idea for a video you could do. Is sabbatical or rest. Lot of video games are in cycles. Go to dungeon, get key , get weapon, beat boss repeat. But this cycle over and over again can become stale. And it is important to have things that break cycle. Side quests, going to town to get lore , cutting grass, going to places you helped or destroyed and see how it changed. It is important to de-esculate the player then ramp up tension. This is why so many games have fishing , mini games , kart racing etc when it isn't even a core mechanic.
Yakuza 0 upgrading
hey doc, can you teach us how to make a game that survives for decades? (like cs:go League of legends and Team Fortress 2)
A great shopkeeper:
Buy: "What are you buying?"
Sell: "What are you selling?"
Leave: "Come back any time."
I read this in his voice
I hate how long it took me to place which shop keep this is despite directly hearing the voice in my head while reading.
"What would you ask of this *humble* merchant?"
"See anything you like?"
"Nice sword..."
"Old Vulgrim's got something neeew for yooouuu!"
Perfect answer.
Perfect shopkeeper: You want to play some Gwent?
Gerson from Undertale plays with the fact that you *CAN'T* start a battle while in a shop menu in such a cool way. If you're a relentless killer, he's not afraid of you, cause he *knows* you can't do anything while in here.
Undertale has the best shops
Burgerpants: "I can't go to hell, I'm out of vacation days" 😂😂😂
EDIT: That was Burgerpants, not Gerson. My bad.
I never understood that. You can't kill any of the unimportant speaking NPCs you meet. A battle is either a random encounter or a boss event, and both are triggered by the monster; the player can't actually start a battle that the other character didn't prompt. So being a shop specifically shouldn't matter
@@globingoblin *SPOILERS FOR THE EVIL ROUTE*
Until you realize that the protagonist, not the player (Chara in this case) initiates a couple of battles in the genocide route (Monster kid comes to mind). Gerson mentions you can't kill him in this specific route, cause there's no one else in Waterfall by the time you get there.
@@polifonikastudio still doesn't make much sense. If Chara can start fights on their own, without actual player input, why not in the shop?
As a long time Pokémon fan, I'll never forget the Kecleon shops in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon.
You try and steal something from him, and he'll call his friends and simply destroy you and your team of legendary Pokémon with ease by moving faster and hitting harder than you.
On top of that, it was the ONLY way to even try and recruit him. I've never managed to do that when I was a child of course, but it was memorable nonetheless.
More fun is when you get to the stairs, use an Orb to suck every item of the shop (forgot the name), take everything and peace out
Note that recruiting the kecleons is almost impossible as they have the lowest recruitment rate by far to the point that it's in the negatives.
You basically need to stack every recruitment boosting method in order to have even a 0.1% chance to recruit one.
Chocobos dungeon had Dungeon Hero X, which was basically the same as the Kacleon shop
Beat me to it, first thing I have been thinking of
note: this trope exists in all of the games in the mystery dungeon series, including chocobo and shiren
My favorite trope related to shopkeepers are those that are secret bosses that are (usually) unexplainably more powerful than the antagonist of the main story, or were retired heroes/villains and settled down, but provoking them brings their legend back to life and you get to fight them.
Bayonetta 1.
Spamton in Deltarune.
Shopkeepers make good hidden bosses because you visit them regularly which helps you build a relationship with them and learn about them, which in turn usually drops hints on how to start their boss fight.
For me it's Charon from Hades! I legit didn't know you could fight him for several runs, until one time I decided the "Borrow" 300 gold prompt was probably not that bad of a consequence and I promptly got taken by Styx
the Newt from RoR2. he isn’t a secret boss, but he has absurd power, and is likely the most powerful being in the game (that you meet; the game implies the existence of beings more powerful than him)
You can beat the big bad evil villain, but there's always a stronger villain and it's capitalism.
@@justinthyme5263 I love RoR2 it's so fun and finding out the Newt has like 1Million HP without any defense factors or smth
I think Fawful's semi-secret shop in Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time is pretty fun.
He's the main villain's minion from the previous game, gone into hiding while plotting his comeback, which leads directly into him being the main villain in the next game. His shop can only be accessed by Baby Mario and Baby Luigi, who he doesn't recognize as the younger versions of the guys who beat him last game.
It's extra funny when you realize that by shopping there, you're basically directly funding the next game's conflict.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night toyed with idea without comitting (unfortunately). In there, the shopkeeper starts acting funny, eventually leaving the shop in the hands of a literal child. You find out that by selling shards (spells) to her, you've been making her stronger as a boss later.
Except that doesn't actually happen. Whether you sell shards to her or not, she has a set amount of power. :/
Mario & Luigi: Fawful's Mean Bean Machine
@@AkaiAzulTouhou Luna Nights, is that you?
@@AkaiAzul Damn, I was planning on doing a no-sell playthrough just to test it. Thanks for letting me know I should just sell my extra crap instead!
@@iateitguy903 Aye. From what I can tell, the act of selling shards doesn't do anything (may or may not change her dialogue). Technically selling your shards makes you weaker, but you can always farm shards, so that not really an issue.
The only true mechanic I've found in regards to shards is how it can affect the game's bad ending. The normal bad ending is what you'd expect, but if you achieve this bad end while having a metric ton of shards, you get possessed in the end. Either way, most people try to aim for the good ending anyways, which doesn't change.
The unforgettable terror of accidentally shoplifting from the Keckleons in Pokemon Mystery dungeon (I accidentally picked up a berry he was selling and tried to put it back, but ended up moving off the blanket and was immediately murdered for stealing lol)
Or worse, a enemy uses explosion.
I don’t know if I would call it a shop but villagers in Minecraft are quite interesting. They’re mobs so they can die and breed and stuff, but you can also trade with them. Optimising villagers can get quite complex with massive villager halls, zombie fixation and protecting them from raids. Piglins are nice too
Villagers definetly count as shops or at least as shopkeepers. Piglins as well, even though they are a ingame "surprise mechanic"
I would 100% call them a shop - in fact their whole gameplay loop is to build the shop for yourself with the trading halls. I think their place in a sandbox game is very interesting, but they do need to be tweaked.
It’s been pointed out many times, but in a game designed for you to build your own reality, using a GUI isn’t the best experience if it can be helped - I wish there were more ways of interacting with the villagers that don’t compromise the main playing experience of the game.
I love that they’re mobs, but I think they fall in an uncanny valley between shop keeper with personality and a tool to lock away and keep in horrendous conditions.
I would be curious to see a villager update that played with concepts from this video - what would a Minecraft villager be like if they had innate personalities along with their intrinsic trades? What if the villagers needed an environment that exposes them to what items they can trade, making them locked in a hole less likely or less advantageous? What if there was a better way of investing in a particular villager that led to more interesting solutions?
Overall I do wish the Minecraft villagers were treated more like shop keepers you can tame, curate, and grow along side rather than superficial GUI’s that you can indiscriminately hold hostage.
Ooh hey hey hey I have a story I have a story. OK, so you know how the worldgen for villages is super borked? Well, in my current world, one generated right on the edge of an ice spike ocean zone, and the spikes grew right through some of the buildings, trapping the villagers in their homes and blocking off their workspaces. So, after acquiring a Silk Touch pick (because why let dozens of stacks of free packed ice go to waste?), I got to work reducing the ice spikes down to nothing. For my troubles, I was rewarded with a fletcher who wanted to buy sticks. STICKS. I didn't even know that was a thing! And it just so happened that I had been farming dirt to make mud bricks (because I like how they look for subway tunnels), and had ended up with a bunch of spruce wood I had no idea what to do with. Not to mention a bamboo farm that had been sitting mostly unused because I had enough yellow floors and scaffolding. A couple trips later, I was loaded with emeralds that I turned around and spent on quartz blocks from the mason down the street.
Problem with villager farms is that you can practically get to that in the first half a day if you are lucky to come across a large village early, trap all of them and just spam food while you find the trades you want. Still fun though.
@@Connor_MooreI remember watching a series where Tango Tek made a mod that is basically what you're describing. if you find the video on his channel, you'll probably find the link to it there.
A great idea that I would love a game to implement is a supply and demand system.
Say you buy a bunch of health potions from the merchant. He's gonna take note. Next time you meet him, the potions are a little more expensive, since the bastard knows he can get away with it, however the antidotes which you bought none of last time are a little cheaper since hes trying to get get you to buy those as well. Or maybe the plot brings the protagonist into a town where a flu is going around, so naturally the health potions will cost a little more due to outside influences.
It would be interesting not just for the world building but because this would force the player to rely less on strategies they got comfortable with.
yeah, it's a little odd that I haven't seen that in any games
The closest is Elite dangerous. But that comes in part of the economy and being a space trucker. Buying from a place makes that price slowly go up. And if you off load a truckload of an item at a port. The price tanks and makes it kind of not worth the fuel.
Trucking and shipping games the only thing I can really thing that has it.
I'm sure I remember one where prices go up as you buy and slowly ticks down in cost over time... But I could just be having a fever dream
FFV kind of played with this early on in one City. You enter a city and all the weapons are super cheap, but as soon as you buy one thing the game immediately kicks you out of the shop menu, you get arrested and by the time you get back to the shops the prices are normalised because theres a crisis that prevents them being cheap. The one thing most people don't get about the karnak shop is that you actually keep the item you buy and you still pay the super discounted price. So you could buy a stack of Ice rods for breaking at a super reduced price for instance.
It'd be great in a more traditional RPG, but the Mount and Blade series that kind of does this. Each town has villages that supply resources to it, in a town whose village produces grapes wine will be cheap and plentiful. If you buy all the grapes to use as food for your army the supply of wine will slowly dwindle and the price will increase. Lots of games that have a "trading" component to them, such as buying goods in one place and selling them in another, tend to have a supply and demand system. The patrician games do this as well, you can sell a significant amount of lumber or bricks to a certain city but if they can't use them all or they don't really have a high enough demand for them you won't get a good price.
Fable getting no recognition.
I'm a big fan of Mount and Blade's shops - they all function off the economy of the towns and cities you find them in. If you go shopping at a city that has several villages dedicated to grain farming, you can expect to find cheap grain to feed your soldiers. If you go on a rampage looting those villages, intercepting caravans, etc., the price of grain goes up. If you take the cheap grain to a city that doesn't have easy access to grain, congratulations, you're a merchant.
I'm also a big fan of the 'simulated economy' style of shops. In something like the X-Series the galaxy is dotted with factories that buy materials they need and sell the products they produce from those materials: The less components they have, the more they'll pay for it, and the same goes in reverse for products: they'll sell products cheaply if they're overstocked. The hitch is that you're not the only ship in this galaxy: plenty of other NPC transport vessels are flying around space competing for the same business you are... so if you find a station offering you an excellent deal on microchips, better get there quick if you want to get the best deal... or wait for the inevitable freighter to drop by and snap up those microchips, then follow them into a less secure sector and engage in a little piracy. Arr harr.
I personally like Shelldon from Splatoon being a too-talkative-for-his-own-good weapon merchant who if you were to ask him about the weapon or you happen to get a new one, he’ll start yapping about it and even give a little hint of what strategy you could possibly use with the set. I’m aware he’s not a particular favorite due to the amount of talking he does, but I think it just shows how proud he is of his own weapons, kinda like they are his little children
Am I the only one that likes to read his walls of text?...
@@bittersweetpepper2482 Well, Canonically Agent 8 does as well, so no, it's not just you.
I like how Crazy Redd's bootlegs painting sometimes are haunted and some of them are sick looking, like looking at the other way at night or presing A and the sculpture will move
this is one of my favorite things!!!!! it makes collecting the fakes fun, im a big fan of the discus sculpture replaced by a ufo c:
The best shops are the ones where the shopkeepers has an unforgettable personality. A more recent example would be Spamton for obvious reasons, but Rodin from Bayonetta and Sheldon from Splatoon are also notable examples.
Would Morshu from the Link: The Wand of Gamelot count? His personality and two lines pretty much carry the entire game.
@@dana.d.4627 Morshu is most likely the most famous and memorable of them all lol
Iwai is a good example of this. Him and Takemi being confidants was a good move to make
Big fan of Beedle, personally. Especially in Wind Waker.
The shopkeeper from "The Messenger" ahah.
Answer: they don't charge real life money
Curiosity Shop from Majora's Mask stands out to me. It's really a black market for ill-gotten goods. The shop owner will buy anything from a trade quest or anything in a bottle. And on night three, something will be for sale from him depending on if you saved the granny on night 1. If you save the granny, Kafei won't see him on night 2 and won't be able to follow the Sakon to the hideout where Sakon keeps his stolen goods.
All in all, this shop has very little to offer, but the way it's involved in multiple side quests is incredible. More than the sum of its parts.
There's also that big vulture in Termina field that steals your items, all of which end up being sold in that curiosity shop.
The donation machine in The Binding of Isaac is interesting : you can donate cents to it during a run, which can upgrade the shops you will encounter in the future and unlock objects, but you can blow it up to retrieve a random number of cents, making you choose between the long run and the present each time.
You also have the devil deals that might be worth the price. or you can ignore them on purpose to get higher chances for angel rooms
Kecleon's shop from Pokemon Mistery Dungeon still gives me nightmares
There's a real itch every time I pass one. "Should I..? Could I even...?? hhhhhmmm........"
Chocobo Mystery Dungeon does this too. You need to successfully steal from the shop and survive to unlock the Thief job. Every time you think, Is it worth it? How easily are you going to be able to do it? I still haven't managed to do it 😂
i love the shop keeper in tunic. in a game with no dialogue and very few npcs it's nice to have a friendly face, even if it's skeletal and in an impossible void
I love how almost every who plays the game gets scared when they first see them but then they are just chilling and waiting to sell
I like modern Persona's equipment shops because they give you the option to immediately equip what you purchase and sell your old gear. Saves a few minutes of menues after the actual purchasing which makes the gameplay so much smoother
Golden sun for the Gameboy Advance doing that too:
Earliest game I've played that did the same thing is Earthbound.
Breath of Fire 4 does that with it's "Trade" option, but I didn't even use it for the first few towns because I was so accustomed to buying, equipping and selling.
@@8BitKO o:
menues
Recettear is still the best game about owning an item shop in the entire industry, decades after its release. A shame there never was a proper sequel to it.
Industry? It is doujinsoft like with most of easygamestation's games
@@YoshiLightStarindependant and passion project still are part of the industry tho
@@RainbowGamx The reason I say this is because doujinsoft especially back then wasn't sold on the traditonal market and was only sold at events like comiket and small hobby shops with no connection to bigger publishers or release platforms.
If I had to pick between rough and hollow, I would still pick rough.
@@BBHood217 Rough has its own charm (e.g: Dark Soul)
It's more a sidequest than just about a shop but in Tales of Symphonia there's a town you come across that gets destroyed for plot reason, once you've progressed enough in the main story you could go there and fund the town reconstruction, it's not only cool from a story perspective, but you also get new sidequests, new shops with one of the best set of weapons you can buy and it has new music. It felt really rewarding to complete this sidequest not only because the town is in an even BETTER state than it was before but you get something from it gameplay wise.
Rest in piece earth dragon.... But you need to die 300 times so I could afford to final so I can have my rubber mallet.
I loved tos joke weapons. Even better cuz they are the second best in the game. (Only behind the infinite scaling potential of the devil arms) iirc
I was so sad when they nerfed the Earth Dragon's gold drop in the rerelease. It makes that sidequest so much harder to do.@@drewrobinson5562
@@drewrobinson5562 the funny thing is that earth dragon got nerfed in the latter versions, there are still some very good way to make money still at least
I heard Earth Dragon was never supposed to give so much, so it's more of a fix than a nerf.
The Messenger's Shopkeeper will always be the most memorable to me
Heck yeah. Their stories and sass-talking are always amusing to see.
"Sometimes the shop is the whole game"
Rusty's Real Deal Baseball has entered the chat.
RIP
@@DesignDoc it will not be missed
Still funny that it took people, like, 5 years to find out there's a hidden character that is only seen if you buy everything at full irl price.
Final Profit: A Shop RPG is a wonderful example of the shopkeeper genre! It's absolutely bursting with secrets, gameplay shakeups, and humor.
The Pathologic 2 bartering system (at both shops and with NPCs around town) is one of my favorite unique shop styles. It puts so much more pressure on inventory management (especially before you craft an expanded inventory size, but even then, you've got to juggle the necessary materials with your already limited space and all of the food/water/other supplies you need just to keep yourself alive) and makes just about every item have value, so you're encouraged to scavenge everything even while you're forced to be choosy about what you hold onto. Each type of NPC vaues different kids of items, forcing you to learn what people like and keep it on-hand, even at the risk of not having other more immediately useful items readily available.
There's even a shop designed to take the garbage, otherwise-useless items, and give you some of the most useful items in return - but then you have to decide, do you waste inventory space grabbing stuff you can't use for a shop that's only open for a few hours in the dead of night? Do you waste time going back to your hideout to store these items, even knowing you might not have time to do other important tasks? Everything is an exchange of resources, and you're always pitting your inventory against the clock and your array of rapidly-draining health/hunger/exhaustion/infection meters.
Many shops and NPCs will take money, but for the majority of the game you will be flat broke, and surely there's something more important you could be buying with that money, right? Plus, partway through the game (mechanic spoilers), most of the food stores suddenly stop taking money at all and will only accept food vouchers. Hope you weren't hoarding your money under the belief that it would help you get through the late game! Now there's only one shop that will let you buy food, and his inventory is limited and prices are exhorbitantly high. Perhaps you have enough money to buy a single, delicious egg.
It's a beautifully brutal mechanic and perfect for hammering home the game's atmosphere that I could write a whole damn video essay about. It's a shop style that's frustrating by design, in the best possible way, because it is in a game designed to frustrate you. Just about anyone who's played either Pathologic game has had an experience where a random NPC has one of the most valuable items in the game and you are just like, two needles or a handful of nuts away from being able to afford it so you start frantically trying to scavenge or barter with other nearby NPCs. It's terrible and it's great and I wouldn't change it for the world.
Something I want to do with my RPG is "competing" shops. Like, one shop sells more things, so you don't have to look all over for items, but it's more expensive or less powerful items than in the specialty shops.
Also, shops will only buy things they sell or can be used to make the things they sell, but there's also a couple places you can sell all your excess stuff, depending on what you want out of selling them.
I'm doing something similar in my game.
There's four rivalry shops and 3 neutral ones. You can partnership with a rivalry shop which makes their rival's prices higher (lower for sell) with the one you partner with having better prices. There's a like/dislike system as well so that they still have a better deal on their preferred items you sell than other shops will.
I might be wrong because I just started playing the game, but it feels like Like a Dragon: infinite Wealth does this.
Early Fire Emblem games made the shops into map tiles instead of being stuck in a menu. Your units can't buy something without using their turns so you might need to choose between buying or tactics. Special note to FE 4 because you can't trade items without spending even more money at the pawn shop.
My favorite FE shop is the FE6 secret shop that sells boots. This one is so stupid but soo cool at the same time. Buying as many Boots as possible. Casually increasing the best stat in the game with just gold.
I'm a big fan of Octopath's NPC shopping/stealing system. A lot is shoppable and stealable at the same time, and it's a fun tradeoff if you are willing to pay a steep price for a good weapon, or gamble on low odds to steal it. There's easy ways to make some money or you can just savescum the stealing, so there's usually a way out. Being higher level means pretty increasing odds to haggle the price down a fair amount. Getting an NPC's info also will expand the regular shop at times, often for stuff you need more off, or for a less steep price. But there's also few specific items you're unable to buy or steal. On the other hand NPC's(often adorable kids) steal cheap stuff that's easy to steal, but from a roleplay perspective buying the stuff for that full completion itch can feel better.
It isn't too complicated, but a fun way to interact with the world and likely the best Noble/Rogue path action combination with distinct pros and cons to both, and it's just always on the back on your mind in towns. Stealing has a bit of an mechanical edge, but the existence of traditional no fuss shops means money is never obsolete.
Me: **sees Beedle in thumbnail** Ohhhhh!
Intro plays. Ohhhhh!
I wasn't expecting that all 🤣🤣🤣
The shops I remember most fondly are the ones from Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It's got you basic equipment and accessory shops, and another shop to sell random stuff you find while salvaging. However, the important ones are the pouch item shops. If you buy at least one of every item at the shops, you can purchase the shop itself. You don't see any profit or discounts from doing so, but owning a shop gives you a passive buff like increasing experience earned in battle or faster movement speed.
oh yeah 2's shop deed system was definitely a unique way to reward buying everything
I love the main shopkeeper in Enter the Gungeon, he can tell you some advice or just talk about random stuff, and he gets mad if you shoot your gun in his shop
The blacksmith is basically the same but she doesn't get mad at you so she's a little worse
I think one of my favorite shop moments is from Deus Ex: Human Revolution during a certain story moment that takes advantage of your trust in the augmentation shop to help the villains get an edge over you at a later part of the story
I love the shop in OFF. While the game doesn't have a fourth wall to begin with, the shopkeep Zacharie readily admits that he's running the item shop that all games need to have. He's an enigmatic figure, and even goes so far as to try and replace a different character later in the game by wearing a mask of his face. Absolutely unsettling guy, but incredibly memorable
Oh yeah! He replaces the creepy cat when you kill his evil brother (well, when the bird inside him kills him), right? My exposure to OFF (besides fanart) was though Markilplier's playthrough.....(I'm 25, 26 in two weeks, but bringing that up made me feel 35.)
@@greenapple9477 Hey happy early birthday! I also first saw OFF from Markiplier lol. And you're exactly right, Judge the cat leaves after finding out his brother is dead. Then Zacharie puts on a cat mask and starts meowing and saying that he's Judge. Off is such a weird game, but it'll always have a place in my heart. Especially with that killer battle music
@@42_violets Thanks for the birthday wish c:
Dokapon Kingdom has a fun system where you can fight the shopkeeper, and if you lose, there's a bounty put on your head that other players can fight to receive. So not only risk versus reward, but other people can benefit even if you don't
Mystia's Izakaya is essentially a run your own shop game. You run the titutal izakaya where you cook recipes and sell them to customers, it's basic in that regard but alongside playing a lite rhyrhm game whenever you cook, there's special customers you can build relationships with to unlock more recipes, extra bonuses for your shop and advance the plot. It's a very cozy game and definately worth a purchase!
The editing (and well, the design) in these videos keeps getting better and better! Love the idea of the video being structured like a mall, keep up the fantastic work!
An alternate system i feel needs to be called out is one place in Saga Frontier. Available only if you started as Asellus, the half-mystic (I.E. half fairy-vampire), there's this creepy goblin/ogre shopkeep right near the beginning. He doesn't want money. He wants a pound of flesh, literally. You pay for his stuff, including an incredibly good sword that will carry you through her entire storyline, using LP-- the Life Points that characters have in addition to HP. When knocked to 0 HP, you lose 1 LP, but any healing spell brings you back. Run out, and that character is unrevivable dead weight until you refill to your max LP by staying at a real inn or hospital. Thus, paying this shopkeep LP significantly endangers your main character (at least for this branch of the game), permanently. And he's only available while you're in that starting area-- you can't come back until the very end of her campaign once you leave. Is it worth spending 7 of your 10 LP to turn into a glass cannon? It's a tough call, and it fits in beautifully with the dark fairy tale theme going on with her storyline.
One type I don't see often is one where there either isn't a traditional currency, like gold usually is in RPGs and the like, or does but also has another element on top of it.
In Ys VIII, for example, most NPCs are as stranded as the party, including the shopkeepers, so you don't pay them for what you want, but rather exchange the various materials obtained throughout the game. Even the next two games in the series, which went back to using gold, still have some things that require farmable materials either in lieu of money or in addition to it.
And the close relative, the game where what's available/how much of it there is is dependent on what you've sold to the shop(s).
Just thought of a weird idea for a game about running a shop. You play as an item shop and your only customer is the Protagonist. You need his money to pay your bills. You can sell equipment upgrades and consumables, each with their own upsides and downsides. The big mechanic is the price. You can charge whatever you want for each item, but if a consumable is too expensive, he'll just leave and get some elsewhere. If an upgrade is too expensive, he runs the risk of dying on his quest. If he dies, the game is over (and it's implicitly your fault)
The Protagonist will also sell you stuff, especially treasure. Treasure can be sent through a series of trades to make new upgrades.
"Hello shopkeeper. I would like to sell 300kg of assorted garbage that I found in a cave. I would also like to buy 300 health potions. Goodbye."
"I hate him but he's putting extra rooms on my house."
There's a boardgame called Bargain Quest that plays with this concept. Each player runs a shop and sells items to adventurers. If you outfit your customers well, they'll survive their quest and spread a good word about you, gaining you reputation. If you instead fleece them and sell them junk, well... You have their money and they can't complain.
My favorite shopkeeper is... the traveling shop-ship keeper Beedle from Windwaker.
I'm obviously not the only one to really like him, considering he's used as the stand-in for 'Shopkeeper' even in this very video, despite not even being the first one you see in that game. But he _acts_ like a legit shopkeeper, and the fact he roams around the map makes it feel like he's actually going around, doing trading with the islanders, and you're just catching him on his route. You're not his most important customer. He's still happy to see you, enthusiastically so, but like any other shopkeeper, the shop is his priority. It's refreshing.
I'm really fond of the shopping system in the TokiMemo Girl's Side series. It's a stat management dating sim but on weekends, you can choose to shop for clothes - these clothing combos can bring you luck, make the guy like you more, unlock extra dialog, and more! But the fact you can only shop on the weekend and you can only visit two shops max adds a layer of complexity on top of the stat building that is core to the game. Items rotate seasonally, thinfs go in and out of fashion, there are flea markets to grab out-of-season items, you can build up loyalty points to get coupons - it's really cool how complex the shopping system is because it doesn't muddy the waters of the game, it only adds to the experience. It's legit one of my favorite mechanics of the game.
I think my favorite shop to this day is the one from King's Quest VI. The shopkeeper was a memorable character that you seem to build a real friendship with over time, your first encounter with the evil genie is there, and there's at least 6 different items used in different parts of the game that you get there, using several different methods of obtaining them. And that includes the iconic magic map that you use constantly ("you feel a strange pulling sensation"). Not to mention all the little easter eggs referencing previous games. Top tier.
You do have Bravely Default's shopkeeper; you have the regular ones for magic, equipment and items, but there's a travelling merchant who acts as your save point and starts off selling you... not a lot. But as you build your town and level up the shops, they start to sell you more stuff (although I think it's just the bare essentials).
One of the best examples of a great in-game shop is Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (2017). In the original game (1989), the pig with the eye patch only said "Shopping Please", but in the remake, they add multiple lines of dialogue based on which shop it is and what piece of equipment you're highlighting. It's a night and day difference!
even the fortune teller guy still gives you passwords and hints on what to do next, it's insane
“What are ya buyin”
“What are ya sellin”
Said this pretty much every time the word shop was brought up
I don't know how interesting it is, but I like the shops in CrossCode. For the most part, you have to present materials along with the asking price. The better the gear, the harder the materials are to get. The reason I like this is that it compels the player to explore and improve their combat prowess. In exploration there are plants to hit and chest to find, with different rarities of both. The higher the rarity, the trickier it is to brake/get. In combat there is the rank up system, with enemy drops being locked until certain ranks is met. The more kills you get in a row before the timer runs out, the more you build to the next rank (from D to S). The timer ticks down in between combat, pauses during combat, and resets to full after, so it's pretty forgiving in that regard. This leads to a sort of mad-dash flow state of murder, your only limit being enemy spawn/map knowledge and combat skill/health bar.
tldr: I like how the shops incentivize exploring the world and going crazy in combat like a sum sort of berserker.
I hope my rambling made any sense and apologies if they did not.
You are so right
"You pay this much"
"No that's to low"
Star Fox Adventure's shop and seller is one of my favorites.
Any other shops I like has to do more with the sellers themself.
- Funcky Kong especially DK 64 - Thanks to his attitude and music
- RE4 Mystery Merchant at least the original due to his voice, also the only save place in the game, as far as I know.
- And Fire Emblems Secret Seller Anna the Merchant even though I first saw her as a Guide for the Tutorial in Path of Radiance she is defenetly my favorite character in the game and I was glad to see her again in the other games in the series.
I always found the idea of going to the shop in Starfox Adventures to be like "welp, here we go again..." xD
Oh I forgot Nintendo Badge Arcade and Rusty's Real Deal Basball (only played the free version of Rusty so far since the eShop is no longer available)
As both as Shops and Characters and although very likable and nostalgic in a way I like the original sellers I mentioned earlier a bit more.
Of course the Nintendo Badge Arcade Bunny will be highly missed when the 3DS online servers goes down.
I love the shop system in persona 5 because you can shop in the vanilla style, but if you help people out, build relationships and complete mementos requests then aspects of the store will change
Its a really simple system that i think has a lot of heart
"Over here, stranga!"
Sure the Resident Evil 4 shop is mechanically basic, but I will always remember that awesome shopkeeper.
He's also the only person who can upgrade your weapons, which gives you a choice to make: buy new guns from him or upgrade your old ones.
I'm surprised you didn't even mention Undertale's quirk of how shops REFUSE to buy your old items. It still shows up as a menu option with dialogue, but the shopkeepers are too smart to take your old crap, except the hidden tem shop.
I would like to point out that Dark Souls basically took the issue the DMC-Shops had and turned it into a feature. Consumables, Equipment, Upgrades and Levels all compete for your currency. Dark Souls and similar titles get around this issue with 2 main tricks:
Firstly and most importantly: You always have the risk of dying and losing your currency. That encourages you to always spend as much as you can and not horde or safe currency.
And secondly: Everything is reasonably priced. There are usually very few things you need to save up a ton of souls for, reducing the need to run around with a lot of souls while grinding and risking losing it all. That also means that you actually can almost always spend your money on something that will help you along the way.
Brütal Legend on screen for 5 seconds, you love to see it!
I've got an idea for an rpg shop.
A shady looking merchant that that pops up in convenient spots, like the middle of a forest, a dungeon, before a boss, etc. The catch is that they're "Conveniently Inconvenient", as in their prices are marked up by 50% compared to shops in towns.
Over time they'll increase their prices by another 10% for each boss beaten or just from your current progress. At some point you can find them in a secret location where they're stealing items from the back of a caravan/truck that belongs to a normal shop. Upon catching them, they'll beg that you keep it a secret and that they'll give you a special discount, that discount being (Your current percent from progress + 1)%.
It seems like a good deal, until you realize that you're now buying regular store items at a 1% discount.
Recently been playing Dark Souls, and I was a bit surprised it wasn't mentioned, with most shopkeepers having their own plotlines and needing to be saved before they'll show up the first time. Then leaving once their plotline's continued
I thought that was a pretty cool idea haha
Charon from Hades is a suprisingly hard fight. But the earlier you beat him, the better, considering he gives you a discount card for his shop (valid till you die in the run)
I got way too hype the first time I beat him cause I thought the discount was permanent 😂
Charon's pretty cool, especially since he does more than just be the shopkeeper.
I love everyone's reaction to the first time you try to fight him, too. "...Did you try to shoplift, Son??" "WHY would you do that??" Adds a bit of spice if you want yet another challenge during a run on top of the Pact of Punishment.
@@avereynakama9854 I never got that far, the heat was too much for me...
One Step From Eden has a really neat shop. Its a roguelike game, so you collect money along the way as you travel stage to stage, and the shopkeeper will sell items for said money. BUT, if you visit a shop when its dark out, she changes. The shopkeepers attitude, dialog and appearance change, and she no longer charges coins, but blood, costing you precious hp in a game with very little healing. Additionally, she has a health bar, just like the standard enemies, so feel free to attack her... Good luck though, she's a real nasty one.
Oh I forgot about that. Yeah, the blood shop is a fun surprise and a neat risk-reward mechanic. "Trade HP for money" vending machines are a genre staple but fully replacing the chapter's shop with an equally-stocked shop that costs HP is dramatic and memorable.
the auction for wind waker was always one of my favorites
it is always satisfying to get the timing on shocking the other bidders just right so that your hike in price (that would still be cheaper than if you just let them go for a bit) prevents them from bidding for the last chunk of seconds.
Shops in Crosscode are amazing. They allow you synthesize stuff for better gear, new HP upgrades, and you can even exchange common items for more rare items. Sure, there's normal shops too, but I love item collecting and combining them.
Plus there even is a semi hidden shop quest that in the end gives you one of thr best weapons
You should check out the shop system in Fable 2!
There's actually a whole economy system in that game where you buy low in some places and sell high in others.
(And yes it is intentional game design, if a little more overpowered than the game devs thought it would be...)
Fable.
Start as a peasant trying to save the world.
And end the game as a property tycoon.
There are regular shops, Shops with a cool or funny charachter, Shops where you can fight a boss or Shops where you own the shop etc.
And then there is the No More Heroes 3 sushi shop that is a shop with an absolute banger theme that causes you to spend way more time in it then you would normaly need.
Anna's Secret Shops throughout the Fire Emblem series are pretty neat
They're basically impossible to find intentionally and require a Member Card to access, but let you buy rare items like high level weapons/staves, promotion items, and in some cases stat boosters! They're also where most of Anna's screen time comes from throughout the series
One of my favs is Swap Meet Pete from Croc 2. His voice mumbling is memorable and he also serves as a warp point to other worlds in the game~
In Inscryption's first Act, you have a chance to see the Trapper, who you can buy some pelts from to then trade with the Trader later on, but they enter your deck as a 0/1 free cost card that can't be sacrificed for other cards. But there's other pelt types that have more health and give you a better list of cards to trade for whenever you reach the Trader. So do you deal with some dud cards that act as a free wall instead of getting to the cards in your deck you want, or do you take the free pelt and leave.
Also there's an item you can buy once per run that destroys a card and get a pelt from it. Usually I'll ignore shops until I can afford the Skinning Knife
25:24 Final Profit is fun. It’s an rpg completely focused on shop stats. Unlike moonlighter, your exploration is entirely for your shop. And it’s quite humorous with the big bad being the better business bureau.
Not sure how unique the mechanics are, but I definitely appreciate the world building in Splatoon shops. Each store having a different a clothing item/ purpose, items having different brands, and the unique store owners make them stand out.
Forspoken hidden merchant. Creepy as all and has great stuff for sale. Was not expecting that in an obscure corner of the map
Rare Forspoken shoutout lol.
Before i watch the video, i want to mention a merchant *character* specifically:
Vulgrim from Darksiders is one of the best and most memorable merchants in all of gaming. He looks almost like a demonic archmage rather than a merchant. What amounts to his "shop" is a series of extraplanar interconnected routes which has proven useful for the Horsemen themselves, after a begrudging deal where he does keep his word.
Though as Darksiders 3 has shown, he can be plenty dangerous and manipulative as well.
Fantastically animated and voiced alike (Phil LaMarr), you *know* he's a sneaky bass tart yet has never gone back on his promises and has always been useful to the Horsemen. In fact he's a pretty rewarding guy and however fake and self-serving his jovial demeanor may come across, he's got a charm to him *because* of it.
I love that man.
That said, respect to the lesser-talked about merchants from Darksiders 2 such as Ostegoth (pleasant goat man), Muria (giant primordial dwarf shamaness), Draven the Blademaster (human who could have conquered the entirety of Earth) and Thane (giant primordial dwarf with a big axe), and also Dis from Darksiders Genesis.
Vulgrim is such an amazing character, it's a shame his shop is so bad in Darksiders 2 😂
@@hoodiegal Awesome to see some appreciators of Samurai Jack: Demon Merchant in here :D
True, and he doesn't appear all that often in a substantial manner. Vulgrim does get to shine again in 3, even having an entire DLC where he's a key figure, and Genesis, proving that he's quite an adept at sorcery.
He *has* to appear in future games as well.
On the plus side for Darksiders 2 merchants, while he doesn't get talked about a lot, Ostegoth is quite a nice character in his own right. Big pipe, nice beard and horns, sweet robe, hair tied into a crystal hourglass, and neat pauldron crystal decorations of the same material as the hourglass.
here is my personal favorite classic shop. the blacksmith in Ys the oath in Felghana. reason why i like it so much is that it has a bit of everything, like other games made by falcom, its got a ton of charm so you will fall in love with the place as a part of the town of redmont. but as for its mechanics, it has 2 shops in 1, a permanent upgrade person, and a shop character. however, since the game makes this system be done through 2 separate characters its never overwhelming. the shop keeper sells 2 different kinds of things, items and equipment. the items has only 4 items in it, that double in price as you buy them so you think about how and when you use them, but also to keep up with the ever growing amount of money you get in the game since her stock never changes. the prices of each all can give you an idea of where the game intends for you to get and use these items without locking you out of them. technically if you really wanted you could get the 3rd strongest armor in the game super early if you really wanted. as for the second shop being the blacksmith himself, he takes a separate currency along with the regular money to upgrade, and the game does a good job of telling you this is what you should be doing too, with both the lack of items in the regular shop as well as the almost mandatory task of upgrading your equipment once before going to the first dungeon. over all, while not super complicated, its a classic system that i really love
My favorite Shop related story in game I experience is in ARKNIGHTS side game rougelike called Integrated Strategies there's an extra dialogue in poking the merchant giving out an extra option to fight him. Succeeding you can "buy" all of the current items for free but you won't meet him again for the rest of the run.
Not to mention there's a banking system where you can either deposit your currency or withdrawing it at any other run of encountering the shop
So glad you mentioned the world ends with you and their unique mechanics! I haven’t quite seen anything like it before or since
Excellent video! One shop that I noticed you miss was Enter The Gungeon's, which is a very memorable shop to me as it has several things going for it. Some of the perks you find throughout your run can affect prices of the items in the shop, or even allow you to steal items. Also if you shoot inside of the shop, even on accident, the shopkeeper will warn you not to again, and if you do he will launch an assault on you, which is pretty easy to avoid, but once you leave and re-enter the room, the shop will be permanently closed for the rest of the run, which increases the difficulty tremendously as it is a rougelike game. All-in-all, a very memorable shop, and there are even several more special interactions and secrets I left out too.
I think my favourite instance of theft mechanics is Dishonored 2, where each of the shops you can visit have a secret way to get in the back. You can take whatever you want- at the cost of not being able to buy gear upgrades from them if they notice you.
There is an absolutely AMAZING shop mechanic in Rusty's Real Deal Baseball! You have to buy things will real human money, but you can always haggle for a lower price. However, if you choose to actually pay full price, it has an impact on the life of the shop keep, and you get to see how helping his business thrive on full priced goods has improved his life.
I like how pokemon does their shop in later games letting you buy more as your progress in the game. It makes way more sense than early routes not having better equipment
A good shop should have all the essentials of the game but the game should be allowed to have it not be necessary for the most part.
That said, in the early games, earlier routes also had less powerful Pokémon, so it somewhat made sense that towns on them didn't stock better gear: they didn't need to.
Caves of Qud is a traditional roguelike. While trading with other people is pretty standard, it gets a bit complicated when you consider that the primary currency is water. You might not be able to sell something because you don't have enough containers to hold your water. Water is heavy, so converting some of it to lighter trade goods with fixed prices is helpful. But you also need to make sure you're always carrying water so you don't die of thirst.
Rune Factory 4 has a shop system where you can sell anything in the game and you try to haggle for better prices. It's very small and most can play the whole game without touching it, but it's a neat way to make a few bucks on the side.
I love how the most famous shop theme is the theme of an "IRL" shop where you spend IRL moeny.
Where The Water Tastes Like Wine has an interesting take on the shop system. As a hobo wandering the railroads of America during the Great Depression, your very concept of money is abstracted. You can't actually see how much money you have in your inventory, you only know that it's "a lot", "a little" or "none at all". Similarly, when you visit a city you can buy food to replenish your health, but their price is also either "a lot" or "a little". And with so many possible random events where you can arbitrarily gain or lose money, it creates this sort of atmosphere to the game where you're encouraged to just go with the flow and explore the world without having to worry much about how much money you have.
Moonlighter was so fun initially with the shop system, but it really turned into what I can best describe as vibe-based selling? Any time you reached a new area (after doing like, 1 or 2) you knew you just needed to sell like one or two of a thing and you had a pretty damn good idea of the ideal price for an item (and the way the prices scaled it felt pretty easy to determine the new price range). If there was a bit more variation it'd have been a more interesting mechanic.
Also the gear progression turned really bland really quickly.
@@furgel7717 it definitely did. Overall very cool concept for a shop game just needed to be a little less formulaic
The funny thing about the Phantom Hourglass yelling shop mechanic is that they incorporated it into its manga as well.
Paper Mario TTYD has a bunch of shops, 4 in the main town, and 1 in all the other towns.
For the most part they are pretty innocuous, walk up to an item on a shelf and press A to buy, and some of them have a secondary menue of items if you talk to the owner. An early game money making option the game explicitly points out is buying an item in one town and selling it in another. (I think its buy sleepysheep in Rogueport to sell in Petalburg)
But the badge shop is by far the most interesting. One of the shopkeepers is Ms. Mowz, who is a mouse with a heart shapped tail. All throughout the story you run into her in dangerous locations where she is stealing rare badges and flirting with Mario, and eventually a quest unlocks to make her available as a partner. (The badge shop remains open)
Its just a good example of how even a basic shop can be enhanced by linking it to the story, and giving the shop keeper a unique and fun personality.
OFF's shop has such a special place in my heart, Zacharie's characterization relies heavily on playing with the rules/limitations of video games as a medium and 4th wall breaks to develop him as a character. He's tied very well into the larger plot of the game and he's always kinda been my subconscious standard for what good in-game shops can look like, funnie dude :)
Neko's traveling shop in Secret of Mana. Providing you with premium gear at double the normal price, but he can always get you gear that's better than what's normally available in the other shops.
I LOVE the four different shop types in Spiritfarer! One of the few times that having separate shops with their own currencies doesn't feel jammed in.
You have the Shipyard as the main progression-based one, tied to using the skills you have to that point; the commercialist one that has multiple branches, just deals in money, and might reduce prices for investment; the wandering tradesman who gives quests and discounts if you do them; and the collectables merchant who buys your knicknacks for some cool stuff.
I think one of my favorite in-game shops is from Going Under! It combines a lot of the different elements you talked about and I think it ends up feeling so nice.
Going Under is a roguelite game themed around the idea of working for a startup company settled in a building above a bunch of "dungeons" that are failed startups run by monsters! Every monster you end up meeting in them are very shallow, personalityless goons that are only there to beat you or be beat by you, but the shop owners are not only passive but very kind to you! They'll talk to you and give you information about the lore so it's helpful from a story perspective but it also serves to kind of humanize everybody else in the dungeon as well and maybe make you feel a little more guilty about beating on them.
Functionally it's a very standard "money for items/upgrades" shop, but there are a lot of different things you can do in the game to affect prices or even take things for free! There's even a particular mentor skill that allows you to buy yourself into debt in exchange for literally chaining a giant ball of debt that slows down your movement to you. But even that is a really interesting fighting tactic bc you can pick the ball up and use it as a weapon!! It's just such a fun and creative system and I think the shopkeepers are written so charmingly
I just love these videos, they are just pure gamedev, and they are so entertaining and useful!
I LOVE the shopping center in Skyward Sword because each seller's booth has a slightly altered version of the shop theme playing in the mall and it's so cool
Minecraft villagers:
You can find villages with lots of vendors, cure zombies to create vendors from scratch, breed them, infect and cure them to get discounts, they can be raided by pillagers. When you think about it they are a lot more unique than you might first think.
I enjoy when a game throws in an occasional shop (NOT every shop) that uses alternate currency mechanics. Whether it's Chrono Trigger making me collect prehistoric Nu parts or that Breath of Fire 3(?) shop series where you need to catch certain combinations of fish to trade, or just that one shop in every JRPG that only accepts sparkly catnip or frog coins or whatever, the 'special shop' is almost always memorable to me.
If it's every shop, that's just a crafting system with a shop-colored coat of paint. I don't make the rules, it just is.
Also, bonus points to Legend of Mana for Playstation 1 for having a very obscure mechanic that let you craft items, then sell them to other saves ON YOUR MEMORY CARD. You could take it to a friend's house and sell them the ridiculously overpowered stunlock bow you crafted, then summon their character to play alongside you on your save file. I can't think of any other game that even tried to do something like that, back in the day.
That's almost like trading finely raised Pokemon back in the game boy days
The closest thing I've seen in the PS1 was trading cards in Yu-Gi-Oh or parts in beyblade lol
Good music and simplicity.
Phantasy Star 4's inventory system wasn't as good as the ones in Square games, but the shop music kicks ass, and they're informative, clearly-labeled, and easy to navigate.
I love the Cult of the Lamb shopkeepers so much. After a certain point they don't even sell anything if you've already unlocked all of the various cosmetics of the game but they're still a chance to get a free item or stack of items. They also just have very fun designs like the big cat wearing plaid who talks about her sacrificed sons or the seed merchant shrimp and his giant snail wife who will fight you if you attack her
I love the shop in the binding of isaac. You can find ways to sneak into the shop without a key and sometimes shops will hold items that compeltly change how you view your run. Having a habit spawn in the first floor makes the entire run different fundamentally.
this video was very informative! thanks
About owning a store in a game an old 3ds game I played a bit of Weapon Shop de Omase had a funny mechanic where the types of weapon and their quality could influence how the customer did on their quest and if you made a bad enough weapon and gave them a bad fitting weapon they could come back injured and I think there was a chance they could die but never saw it myself.
i loved the little potion/oil shop with the bird from twilight princess. if you fill your bottle or lantern and leave without paying, next time you come in the bird will attack you. you can put rupees in his box and he'll calm down. he also comments if you pay more or less than the actual price, or if you give him rupees without getting anything from the shop. i find him cute. there's also another "shop" where you can rent a boat and go fishing on it. if you look at certain objects the shopkeeper will tell you about it, and even get annoyed if you've already looked at it a few times. she can also get mad and kick you out if you roll against something important multiple times, like her pet bird's cage. when you come back in you have to apologize, and she reluctantly accepts it and lets you stay.
The first thing that occurred to me was the shops in Chocobo's Dungeon 2. In many ways a pretty typical rogue shop, but that game was my first introduction to unidentified items, and so seeing a shop with unidentified items of potentially significant value, trying to make informed decisions based on the price and what items hadn't yet been identified, was a new and fun experience.
My favorite shop has to be The Bazaar Between Time. there is such an insane amount of ambiguity in RoR2’s lore and the Newt is just such a cool character. along with that, i love how all the items he sells have a drawback, so they are sold there to keep them out of the basic loot pool, and they can be bought with a meta-currency without it affecting the game’s difficulty
Nice video. Though there's a game called No Umbrellas Allowed where you run a pawn shop that definitely deserved a mention in the running a shop category.
SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS 💜
Kecleon Shop from the Mystery Dungeon series will always be iconic for me. It's classic that the shop keeper (and all his friends) will beat you to death if you steal, and it makes recruiting Kecleon for your team an even more elusive goal.