Good day Keepers!
Development for Shoppe Keep 2 has been ongoing since our initial announcement and while we did share a massive ton of features in that post. There is still much more to come! So what has been happening?!
We went to EGX2017
We attended EGX 2017 last month and met with many players who played the original Shoppe Keep. We got some great feedback and was surprised by the enthusiasm from those that attended.
If you visited the stand, thank you for coming to check out the game! We are definitely working on the feedback that was given to us at the show.
Feedback from the last Steam announcement
Speaking of feedback, I'm also really pleased with the last Steam announcement regarding the options for placement and pricing. Thank you all for getting involved and sharing your feedback. We hope to keep this level of communication open. Regarding Last weeks feedback Arvydas has answered the following:
"To recap. The comments were overwhelming! But here is the end result. We will be modifying option 1 to not be so cumbersome as it is now. And leaving in Option 3 for anyone who wants to use it. So if you want to do a quick change. Heres the price gun. Want to go slower. Use the hammer. I really want to give more choices on how to manage the shop and the town to the player during gameplay."
Development progress!
Now, onto some of the juicy parts of the development process. We're planning to show off the development regularly but if you have any thoughts or feedback, don't be afraid to send them our way. We want to make a great game and the sooner we can get core feedback, the easier it will be to begin implementing it!
The Displays
Displays act similar to how they did in Shoppe Keep 1, decorate your shoppe with a beautiful book case, a princely pedestal or a timeless table and then adorn them with your wares for customers to check out and buy.
Furniture pieces now act as items in your inventory. The reason for this is to give players much more choice in decorating their shoppe. Various furniture types and designs can be obtained by NPC vendors, quests, loot drops, crafting etc.
In order to place the furniture piece, you can drag the item into the hot bar. you can then select the item in your hot bar and can then place the furniture piece and rotate it.
Display Damage
Displays have durability which is affected by any action (placing items, items removed from it, or if it was damaged by weaponry).
This will be shown via a texture change and once a threshold is reached, the display will begin o break down gradually until you repair it... Though if you neglect maintaining your display it will eventually become nothing more than a trash pile for you to clean up!
Quest UI
The original Shoppe Keep had quests which involved 'Sell x amount for y'. We are expanding the quest system in Shoppe Keep 2. These can include actions that the player has to complete and a quest can be collected by talking with NPC's. Quest rewards range from Mun's (The in game economy), a rare item or unique order scroll additions. So we've added a Quest UI which helps players track down what has to be done. At the moment, once a quest is complete, you'll receive a notification and receive the reward without needing to turn in.
Concepts
As part of expanding our team for Shoppe Keep 2, we now have concept artists that will help us better envision and present some of the work that we will be working on in the future. As an example we are reworking our crafting system and each crafting type will require a unique NPC with their own house. Here are some concepts of the alchemy crafting houses our artists have worked on. We hope you love them and can offer your own suggestions!
World Saves
Each player will be able to have up to three world saves. A world save contains information about the date, shop status, display locations, items for sale, status of the town and world quests that have already been complete. When playing online, one of the players will host their world and use up a save slot. So maybe you'll have one save dedicated to playing with friends and another which is dedicated to playing alone.
Crafting
SK1 had an alchemy cauldron which required you to drop items in a unique exact sequence to get a result. It was a bit tiresome. In Shoppe Keep 2, you no longer have to experiment with items, instead you will meet crafter NPC's like this cook here.
If an NPC you interact with is able to craft something, it will be shown on his UI panel. You can open up the crafting panel when speaking to the Cook.
This window displays a list of craftable recipes that you currently own or have unlocked via various means. Selecting a recipe like the bread, will then reveal information on what type of ingredients are required to make the craftable item. You can then decide how many you want to make, or if you just want to make the maximum amount you can press the fill button. This will initiate a task which will fill up over time.
You can go and complete any other duties and return to the crafter once he has finished. We are looking into adding blacksmith and alchemy crafters into the game and may add others if we find them necessary and a good addition to game and its world.
That's all... For now!
And there we have it, our first major dev blog, of which more will come to introduce new game mechanics, new artwork and we'll hope to ask you more questions on some of the design decisions. If you have any thoughts that you could share to help us improve the game, do let us know. Make sure to add the game to your wishlist on Steam to stay up to date with any new info!
Social media stuffs!
As of typing, our popularity on Indie DB is:
Thanks to those who are supporting us by checking our our announcements over there too!
Indie DB Page
Oh! And if you like twitter and enjoy seeing information presented in 140 characters or less. well, we got a twitter for that too: