Recettear: RPG Shop simulator - It's out and great and you should buy it

Mojo_Jojo

UPDATE AGAIN
And now you can pre-order over steam! For 10% off!

Valve and Carpe Fulgur LLC today announced an agreement to distribute the PC game Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale by independent gaming group EasyGameStation on Valve's Steam service.

Recettear was first released in Japan in December 2007 by EasyGameStation at the 73th Comiket convention. Carpe Fulgur has provided a top-class localization of this shop-simulator-slash-RPG title, and has distribution rights for the game outside Japan.

Recettear is the story of an item shop, the girl who lives in it, and the fairy who turned her life upside down. Recette Lemongrass finds herself in charge of an item shop built into her house, in order to pay back a loan her father took and then skipped out on - and Tear, her newfound fairy "companion", won't take no for an answer! As Recette, you have to decide how you'll get your stock - either through playing the markets in town or going out into the wild with an adventuring friend and thrashing beasts until they give up the goodies - how much to sell things for, what the shop should look like, and how to best go about getting the money Tear needs to pay off the loan. If you can't come up with the money... well, hope you like living in a cardboard box.

"We are happy - almost to the point of delirium, really - to be on Steam," said Andrew Dice, Project Director for Recettear at Carpe Fulgur. "This is the first time an independently-made game from Japan has appeared on the Steam service. This will allow the game to reach an audience of millions that otherwise would've been closed to it, and we have high hopes that Steam users will enjoy the game for the unique gem that it is."

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is currently available for pre-purchase on Steam with a 10% discount and will be available to play on September 10th, 2010.

UPDATE FOR THE RELEASE DATE

Upward Movement - August 12, 2010

So to start with, this bit of news needs something. A backbeat, if you will. Something appropriate for the occasion.

This should do nicely.

Carpe Fulgur and Recettear have received a lot of great press. We've now got a legion of fans who are pretty much howling for the release of the full game. We even have cosplayers, which is a little bit staggering.

And yet, it's been something of a struggle to get distributors to take us seriously. An indie game from Japan, localized by a pack of nobodies? Are they for real? Why would we want to carry their game that nobody would want to buy?

Well. Ten thousand demo downloads in under a month don't lie. Quality, we hope, doesn't lie. And now one distributor has said: "Yes, they're for real. And we'll help them."

After a month of hand-wringing, we are pleased to announce that Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale will be sold on Stardock's Impulse platform. Stardock has been a supporter of independent software development for over a decade and we're thrilled to be going up on Impulse.

Recettear will be available for purchase on Impulse for the price of 20 USD in North America, 15 Euros in the European Union and 13 GBP in Great Britain, and is tentatively scheduled for release on September 10th, 2010. This date may change slightly depending on certain factors involved with the QA process for both Carpe Fulgur and Impulse, but that is the current target date.

We couldn't have gotten this far without the support of our fans. You guys allow us to seize the lightning, and now it has been seized. We may announce more distributors in the future, but either way, Recettear is coming!

Okay, this is a pretty weird one. The Demo (v1.1) is now out though, so just go and try it.


You're a little girl running a shop to avoid getting her house repossessed (due to a loan taken out by her missing father).

The game is split into two main areas:
1) Selling shit


2) Getting more shit to sell


Because you're "friend" the fairy needs regular payments or it's game over.

Official Site

I just finished the demo myself and now I'm positively slathering at the thoughts of getting the full English translation. Annoyingly, there's no firm release date beside "soon".

Also, apparently there's no uncomfortable porn scenes. At all! Hurray!

TychoCelchuuu

For anyone who is interested, there is a nice review on Rock Paper Shotgun and an interview with the people translating it.

Kalkino

This appears to be just for Windows. Or has anyone found a Mac demo version?

Drez

Interesting.

Mojo_Jojo

Sometimes people will come to your shop to try and sell you things, because I'm an idiot though, I never notice and always offer them more than it's worth (thinking that I'm selling). While this is just me hurling money down the toilet, it has the strange effect of giving me some kind of Merchant XP bonus. Interesting. I should try selling at sub-base, this could make it worth stocking really cheap things.

Kalkino wrote: »

This appears to be just for Windows. Or has anyone found a Mac demo version?

I'm sure I'd heard the dev comment one way or the other on this, but I can't dig anything up.

YggiDee

The Merchant XP bonus is something you get whenever you make a sale on the first try. You can get them pretty consistently once you figure out where the different character types stand, financially (ie little girls are tightwads, old men are big spenders, ect)

Mojo_Jojo

Ahhh, that makes sense. And yes, fuck those little girls. They won't even buy at 120% for me when I've dropped from 150%. Bitches.

Kalkino

I really want to play this. Oh well, one more reason to go back to Windows I guess!

SpaceDrake

Mojo_Jojo wrote: »

Kalkino wrote: »

This appears to be just for Windows. Or has anyone found a Mac demo version?

I'm sure I'd heard the dev comment one way or the other on this, but I can't dig anything up.

It's Windows-only. However, the game isn't terribly advanced (it's a DirectX8.1 game, really) and we've had reports of people running it in Wine and similar DX wrappers with minimal issues. We still recommend running it in native Windows, though.

Also, sup. I've actually been part of the forums for a dog's age even if I don't post that often. I'm the dude in charge of this madness, so if people have questions or whatnot, I could try to field 'em.

And yes, we will be releasing Soon™. Pretty Dang Soon™, I hope, since the game's pretty close to done on the localization side and we've got a few good discussions with distributors going.

cj iwakura

This sounds magical.

SpaceDrake, you're involved? This sounds like it'll be the bestest, then.

gunwarrior

I've got to try this, looks pretty cool

KalTorak

This seems like the sort of thing I could play for hours and hours on my iPhone or DS.

Tertiee

Tried to run the game via Wine and though it installs correctly there are no sounds or music. I'll probably get around to installing it on my windows partition but it'd be nice to play this game without restarting if anyone happens to know of a simple fix.

SpaceDrake

Someone on another forum reported that "no sound" issues were caused by sound drivers not liking Wine as opposed to any problem with the game. Try updating your sound drivers, perhaps?

Lucedes

SpaceDrake, I'll buy it for 100% of base price!

Actually, that would make me a little girl, wouldn't it? Capitalism Ho!

TNTrooper

Capitalism Ho! should be in the title.

DevoutlyApathetic

This game is fun and the translation is nicely done. The funny bits are actually funny.

Page-

Hope there are some more interesting adventurers to recruit later on. This kid with the sword is kind of boring to play. I'd also have loved a more traditional turn-based crawl, but other games do those well enough.

SpaceDrake

Oh, the adventurers get quite varied in the full version. No need to worry about that. Louie is pretty easily the "dullest" to play (although he's also one of the toughest in terms of defense).

cj iwakura

The sound effects work for me, but no music.

SpaceDrake

This is under Wine or similar, CJ?

This is also where I remind you goobers that you really should be running it in a native Windows environment if you can manage it at all

Dark_Side

Damn little girls are killing me. None to fond of the cheapass old men either. Fun game though.

Ashe

Yayifications!

Had a brief dabble last night and enjoyed it. Good stuff. Next time I'll try not to get Louie flattened when he is already carrying piles of loot. :oops:

Handsome Costanza

Looks kind of cool but I'll admit I clicked on the thread thinking the title of it was "Rectaltear: RPG Shop simulator".


I was pleasantly mistaken.

Antihippy

Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on this.

Looking forward to it.

IceBurner

Demo was fun. Translation is amusing. Found going a-dungeon-ing pretty hard, but making it through is quite a jackpot.

Per the forums, target price is $20 USD (or the equivalent in local currency) on release. Hope they can make it onto Steam, but would still consider it if not.

Bioptic

IceBurner wrote: »

Demo was fun. Translation is amusing. Found going a-dungeon-ing pretty hard, but making it through is quite a jackpot.

Per the forums, target price is $20 USD (or the equivalent in local currency) on release. Hope they can make it onto Steam, but would still consider it if not.

It's DRM-free, though! And not exactly the biggest filesize in the world. Why would you go for a more restricted version that gives the devs/translation team less of a cut?

gunwarrior

Just finished the demo and I'm in love with this game, can't wait till release

Kalkino

SpaceDrake wrote: »

Mojo_Jojo wrote: »

Kalkino wrote: »

This appears to be just for Windows. Or has anyone found a Mac demo version?

I'm sure I'd heard the dev comment one way or the other on this, but I can't dig anything up.

It's Windows-only. However, the game isn't terribly advanced (it's a DirectX8.1 game, really) and we've had reports of people running it in Wine and similar DX wrappers with minimal issues. We still recommend running it in native Windows, though.

Also, sup. I've actually been part of the forums for a dog's age even if I don't post that often. I'm the dude in charge of this madness, so if people have questions or whatnot, I could try to field 'em.

And yes, we will be releasing Soon™. Pretty Dang Soon™, I hope, since the game's pretty close to done on the localization side and we've got a few good discussions with distributors going.

Thanks for the answer. Kind of neat to have it from the horse's mouth too

TNTrooper

My job is going through vendor catalogs doing a markup on the dealer price and relisting their products it is boring as hell and I can't stop thinking about how once I get off and go home I can play a game where I mark up items and sell them to people. This is pretty much a video game of my crappy boring job and I am loving it.

IceBurner

Bioptic wrote: »

IceBurner wrote: »

Demo was fun. Translation is amusing. Found going a-dungeon-ing pretty hard, but making it through is quite a jackpot.

Per the forums, target price is $20 USD (or the equivalent in local currency) on release. Hope they can make it onto Steam, but would still consider it if not.

It's DRM-free, though! And not exactly the biggest filesize in the world. Why would you go for a more restricted version that gives the devs/translation team less of a cut?

Because even were all of my HHD's to implode simultaneously while vaporizing the entirety of my compact/digital versatile disc collection, I don't need to worry about being able to download it again.

Turkey

This came out of nowhere.

Going to follow its development.

harvest

I saw this over on RPS and was sad that it wasn't released in full yet. But Soon or Pretty Dang Soon are good news

ronrab

I've been following this elsewhere as well, and will definitely be buying a copy as soon as it's Pretty Dang Soon.

Elvenshae

I refuse to purchase this game unless I know the following:

How many variations on "Okay" will Recette ship with in the final product? If that answer is less than 100, well, then, gentlemen, you need to work harder.

Also: Damn this game is cute.

Bioptic

IceBurner wrote: »

Bioptic wrote: »

IceBurner wrote: »

Demo was fun. Translation is amusing. Found going a-dungeon-ing pretty hard, but making it through is quite a jackpot.

Per the forums, target price is $20 USD (or the equivalent in local currency) on release. Hope they can make it onto Steam, but would still consider it if not.

It's DRM-free, though! And not exactly the biggest filesize in the world. Why would you go for a more restricted version that gives the devs/translation team less of a cut?

Because even were all of my HHD's to implode simultaneously while vaporizing the entirety of my compact/digital versatile disc collection, I don't need to worry about being able to download it again.

It's *usually* policy for Indie devs to allow unlimited re-downloads of DRM-free stuff - frequently directly from a link that's supplied in an email to you. So if I ever want to redownload World of Goo, I just search for it in my Gmail account and click the supplied link.

I mean, I'm all for convenience, but if things get to the point where people are buying stuff off Steam "because I want all my things in one place", or "I don't want the hassle of checking my email account", Eggs in One Basket doesn't begin to describe it!

This is obviously far in the future, but I think the game would be ideally suited to an iPad or even iPhone release - movement precision isn't hugely important and the game breaks down into small chunks quite easily.

Aroduc

The most amusing (to me) part of this thus far is that EGS (the original doujin developers) put up a banner on their site advertising that "Recettear English Version! Comming Soon!"

I should also get around to checking out Terretoire at some point too I suppose, even though it's not due out until December.

Candymancer

I've played through 3 times. Twice normally, a third run with just buying and selling and no dungeon hopping. Forcing myself not to play more as to not burn myself out for the full game. It really struck the harvest moon cord with me(Rune factory would probably be more accurate, but I haven't played it), which to me wasn't the joy of owning a farm, but the joy of bringing in the monies. Can't wait for the full game.

Mojo_Jojo

I was sort of hoping to return from my foreign jaunt to find this had finished and that I could fork over cash for it. Blast.

Delphinidaes

Played the demo for this, it really has no right being this entertaining. I can't even put my finger on WHY I enjoy it so much but I can't wait until the retail is out.

Mojo_Jojo

Oooh, over on the SA thread the guys who are doing this are saying that they should be able to announce something* today or tomorrow

*Most likely the release date