Shopkeeper

Shopkeeper is a game that never went beyond very early playtesting.

In this game, you run a fantasy shop. The one where the heroes buy their +1 swords and sell the loot they took from the dungeon.

The game pre-dates similar games that became popular a few years later, such as Shoppe Keep (first version 2015, Shoppe Keep 2 in 2018), Winkeltje (2019) or the mobile game Shop Titans. Unlike them, however, it was never finished or published.

Development

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Here are a few screenshots from the development:

The game was under development in Unity 3D for Mac, Windows and Linux. Players would begin with an empty building and some gold and could upgrade the shop to sell various kinds of items, such as weapons, armour, spellbooks, etc. Selling good items cheaply to heroes would mean that those - now better equipped - would have a higher chance to survive and return with loot. On the other hand, you could always sell expensively and not care if they make it or not. However, parties of heroes would prefer shops that make them good deals, both for further shopping and for selling loot. So it was going to be a trade-off between profit and good relations.

A good part of the backend development progressed well beyond early stages. Among other things, the game had a complete simulator for dungeon exploration, with various quests and challenges for the heroes to overcome. Ironically, this part would only be seen by players indirectly, as the heroes returned with stories of their adventure. However, the simulator was what enabled the game to take the weapons, armour and other equipment into consideration when establishing success or failure.

Later in the game, players would also have the opportunity to buy a new shop, with more space for items to buy and sell. Several shops were built, as you can see on the pictures on this page. However, the development of the gameplay and user interface in 3D was too time-consuming, and gameplay suffered from a lack of player-to-player interaction, while it had not enough content for a pure single-player game. In the end, with real-life pressures and no clear path forward, I abandoned the project.

Technology

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The client was developed with Unity 3D as the game engine, while the backend server was a Symphony web application with REST API and Postgres database.

Dungeon Automator

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The part of the game that was most complete had nothing to do with the shop at all.

I wrote a complete auto-dungeon script where a party of heroes would venture into a dungeon, meet various traps and monsters, gain treasures and all that. Fully automated and procedural. This would generate a “diary” of their experience that the players could read when these parties came to their shops to restock.

The purpose of this script was for the parties to have better than randomly generated needs. If they had met a lot of monsters, they’d need healing potions (yes, the script would understand when they are low on health and make them use healing potions and all that). They would have gold depending on how successful their last run was. They would even gain experience points and all. Essentially, I automated D&D.

Still have that script somewhere. Maybe in the future I’ll find a use for it.