Shop Titans | A Review
Hello everyone, I am the business oriented master of haggling, G.E.M.Simov, a fellow so in tune with the desire for shekels within the capitalist mind that I am perfectly suited to tell you about the game “Shop Titans”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Shop Titans is a mobile game that has found its way onto PC. Naturally, as with most mobile games, it has a dreadful port for PC (no keybidings, everything is done via clicking buttons on the screen). Unfortunately, it also carries over all the faults of a mobile game, having only an interesting concept to use as a means of drawing the Player in.
In Shop Titans, the Player takes over a shop and builds it up from nothing into something extraordinary, while hiring heroes to go and do quests, which brings the Player resources they can use for the crafting of items that are to be sold. All of this is done with the mouse, and navigation through countless little menus made for fingers rather than a mouse cursor’s utilities. Menus that do not scroll and need to be clicked and dragged, clicking on something that can be clicked multiple times (such as a bar) requires that the click be performed 20 or more times instead of being held down or, god forbid, dragged (the bar to get clicked, held and dragged to the desired fullness), menus that, fortunately, can be escaped by pressing the Escape key (though that information is not conveyed anywhere, meaning that Players who do not test it will find themselves clicking the red X on the screen and adding immense amounts of time to their already bloated and vapid playtime of the game).
So, as stated, the Player just clicks and navigates menus. The Player clicks their ‘craft’ button, opens up their ‘craft’ menu, drags the available options with their mouse and then selects one. Selecting an option immediately gets to crafting it (so long as the Player has the required resources). These resources are split into two categories - passive and active (dubbed so by yours truly). Passive resources are generated passively, without any need for the Player to do anything. They are the basic building block for all craftable items and are a limiter on how much the Player can do in a given moment (limited by the maximum quantity the Player can have in their storage, dictated by the object in their store).
Active resources require some interactions from the Player to be obtained, and they are procured through the completion of quests (more on that a bit later). So, the Player, if they have resources, clicks the item and then must wait the required amount of time (15 seconds at the very least). Afterwards, the item is not automatically added to their storage - the Player needs to click it to collect it. Similarly, the Player can not set an item to be automatically produced so long as they have resources, they need to click and click and click.
When the item is complete, it frees up its ‘crafting slot’ (meaning that the Player has a limited number of items they can craft at once, that being two at the start of the game, with each subsequent one costing obscene amounts of in-game currency OR premium currency [that’s the key here]). There’s a great deal of inconvenience at play, but it is manageable. So the Player can, after storing their crafted item, start making a new one.
Once stored, a crafted item enters the shop’s ‘for sale’ pool, allowing non-Player Characters (NPCs) who want to buy that item to come to the shop. Once an NPC of that variety arrives, it will look around for a bit and then stand next to the shop’s counter, with a bubble over their head showing the desired item. That, upon being clicked, brings up yet another menu which offers a number of options - the Player can refuse to sell the item, the Player can sell the item, the Player can haggle, making the item two times cheaper or two times more expensive, the Player can suggest another item and the Player can do small talk with the NPC.
Of those, all interact with another one of the Player’s resources - Energy. Energy is required for performing the funky options in the selling menu - with refusing to sell to a customer (before any other action) being free, and selling to the customer providing the Player with a certain amount of Energy. The Player uses a large amount of Energy to double an item’s price, or to suggest a different item to the customer (leading to another, perhaps more lucrative sale). The Player can gain energy by giving the customer a discount, though the quantity earned is around 3 times less than what is required for a double price of a given item.
Small talk can either give the Player some energy or take energy away. Additionally, doing either of those - offering a discount, small talk, offering another item - makes a refusal to sell to the NPC cost the Player Energy.
Surprisingly, the Energy mechanic actually introduces a very neat loop of managing that resource, deciding which items to busy oneself with to get a better price off of them, and which items to sell cheap.
However, this mechanic itself is tightly combined with the other mechanics - crafting and so on - and manages to create a little bit of a dance that the Player might need to engage in, thus making the Gameplay of the game itself reasonably… Well, engaging, until the Player runs out of one (or both) of the passive resources and then everything grinds to a halt. Alternatively, they can run out of storage space, and then everything also grinds to a halt!
Those little problems can be resolved by upgrading things or by spending REAL money. As an example - if the Player runs out of passive resources, they can spend Guild Coins (once per day) to get a bundle of 50 units of resource, or they can spend some Gems (premium currency) and get a refill as many times per day as they require. If the Player runs out of storage, they can upgrade their storage by spending gold (which is acquired by selling items), though every subsequent upgrade requires increasingly larger amounts of gold (and thus time). Alternatively, the Player can spend Gems and get it upgraded… Instantly.
That was to be expected, no? Upgrading an object in the shop requires time. It starts off quite innocuous, 5 minutes, 10… Then it goes to 1 hour, 2, 8, 24. The game’s true colors are starting to show.
Let’s go back to these quests. So, the items the Player makes are all tools for adventuring, and aside from getting sold for gold, they can also be equipped by the Player’s Characters - who are separated into Heroes and Champions. Champions cannot equip items, but provide bonuses to the parties they are attached to, while also having a ‘story’ that the Player can track. Champions are unlocked with special ‘coins’, which are obtained through a… A battle pass (can be upgraded with Gems) with a number of tasks on it.
Regardless, that’s that. Heroes, on the other hand, are units that can be customized by the Player, who can be equipped with the items the Player has made (though, oddly enough, the items have a level requirement WHICH IS NOT SHOWN ANYWHERE, there is literally no way of knowing what an item’s level requirement is, Presentation L). These Heroes occupy Hero slots (bought with gold or Gems), and they themselves must be purchased with gold or Gems, though there are certain stipulations.
There are 3 types of heroes (or classes, perhaps) - ones who use metal armor, ones who use leather armor, ones who use robes. Each of those has half a dozen sub-classes, or just classes. Every subsequent class past the first one (which is free) costs more and more resources to unlock, but is also exponentially stronger. Neatly, the level requirement (the shop can gain levels, unlocking new things) can be entirely bypassed if the hero is purchased with Gems
So, the Player recruits heroes, gears them up (increasing their stats through items), gives them some seeds to increase their stats further, and then sends them on a quest. The quest does itself automatically over a certain amount of time - 10 minutes, 15 minutes… More minutes than that. Whether the quest is successful depends on the power of the heroes sent on it, and each quest has a recommended amount of power indicated on it. Additionally, the characters that are about to be sent on a quest, while the Player is deciding whether to send them, have a bubble over them showing their mood for the current quest - if things are not looking good (as in they might die) the mood is foul. If things are good - the mood is great.
Of course, quests can be made way more lucrative than they already are - the Player can spend money (Gems) to increase the power of their heroes, to increase the amount of resources received, to increase the number of quests that can be undertaken, to make quests finalize immediately - that sort of thing. When a quest is complete, the heroes who were on it gain experience (potentially leveling up, becoming stronger and becoming eligible for better items), resources are granted to the Player and a chest might show up. Of course, there are also a few resources that would be given to the Player IF they pay to get them (paying Gems).
Chests grant the Player goodies, if the Player can unlock them. Of course, keys for chests can be obtained through meager normal means, but they can also be bought with Gems. Chests provide the Player with great goodies - as stated - among which are SPECIAL, totally unique (and mouth-wateringly expensive) blueprints for cool items that just carry the entire store on their backs.
Back to the heroes - after a quest, they need to heal up. So the Player spends 10 minutes waiting for them to do their quest, after which they get offered to pay money to win more, after which they must wait 10 more minutes before they can wait 10 minutes for their goons to do the quest. Of course, that wait period can be skipped by using certain items… Or spending Gems.
That’s the game. That is the whole game. The Player has resources they need to manage and space they need to contend with, all that wrapped up in a big old clock that they need to sit on top of. The Player can get down and click click click for a bit, getting into the vibe of things, only to then run out of resources and/or storage space, which stops them dead in their tracks, makes them consider buying Gems, and has them quitting the game for a few hours so that things can solve themselves.
This game is excruciatingly foul, in the sense that the game rewards (or pretends to reward) the Player for crafting many items of the same variety. Craft 7 of those and get a bonus, craft 11 of them next and get a bonus, then craft 14 and get an even bigger bonus - but the funny thing is that there are only ever up to two customers in the store at a time, so the Player produces items faster than they can sell them, but not because there’s a limit to the number of customers - customers just do not show up for extended periods of time, maybe because no customers for item X are present, but then the Player only has item X, because the game is urging them to keep crafting that same item to get better deals on it or to unlock another item or to get some sort of reward…
It’s not fun to play on account of all the roadblocks that it slams in the Player’s face and then asks for money, while offering an alternative - that being to sit down and wait, spending time. Running out of a certain type of resource can be argued to urge the Player to craft another type of item, one that requires a different type of hopefully available resource, but even then the Player runs out of resources, the player runs out of storage room. That is further exacerbated by NPCs showing up and selling to the Player - in bulk, exceptionally cheap - further clogging up their storage.
So what’s left is this relatively stinky mess that, if cleaned up and shaved with great intensity, can be something very fun and entertaining. Alas, that is not the case. Spend exorbitant amounts of money to make the game a bit more fun, while taking away any point of playing the game (because what are you building up towards, ultimately?). It is littered with horrible approaches to gameplay - doing things the Player does not want to do by default, such as spending gems, coins - anything really - even if the Player is actively trying to have the game not do those things by clicking off the screen or pressing the Escape key.
It’s just a shitty, always online mobile game. It has the potential to be fun for 30 seconds out of every 30 minutes, but that’s definitely not worth it. It does the thing most mobile games do - systems on top of systems, complexity on top of complexity, which would be exceptionally interesting and engaging if it was not built to be bad, to take up hours of the Player’s time OR their money.
1/3
Presentation
Shop Titans is a mobile game that features countless little menus, many of which fail to work as intended, and underneath which is found a relatively charming in appearance, isometric storefront. Or, rather, a building’s innards with a bunch of characters with anime-adjacent appearances. It looks quaint, it looks a little endearing, and the characters themselves have a set of surprisingly well done animations.
Aside from that, the game also sounds a certain way - like a mobile game. Inoffensively meager music that is so forgettable it could be argued that it is not even there, sound effects that maintain an air of calmness and cozy, only for that air to be violently torn away when something even slightly important happens as a means of injecting the Player with dopamine (and to terrorize their eardrums via loud trumpets). Naturally, as expected out of a mobile game, there are satisfying bubble pops and plops every time something is pressed.
Unfortunately, the menus suck. As mentioned in the Gameplay section, some information is never available - such as what the level requirement for an item is - but there is more. The Player is not informed that a certain UI element pulls up another UI element that displays how many passive resources they currently have (which is a value otherwise obscured and discoverable in menus only), the Player has no means of seeing how much of their inventory is currently occupied without actively going into another menu, the Player’s energy overlaps with the Player’s battle pass progress and is thus completely indiscernible through the intended UI element.
Then there are stutters. Whenever the Player starts a quest, the game lags for a second. Whenever the Player finishes a quest, the game lags for a second and even crashes from time to time.
Shop Titans features a lengthy and in-depth tutorial, which holds the Player’s hand so tightly that it’s painful and leads into incredibly unpleasant situations (affecting Gameplay), but due to the way the game works it is, ultimately, inconsequential. Regardless, the Player does get to learn how the game’s mechanics work and how to interact with most of them on a sufficient level - that can be regarded as one of mobile games’ strengths, that being their immense effort to teach the Player how to play the game.
As with all mobile games, though, this one features mountains of garbage and tremendously ulterior motives. So much so, that it ties its tutorial into a dreadful advertisement urging the player to buy a special pack with a ‘huge’ discount that lasts only 48 hours - so the game slams the Player with immense FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), misleads the Player into thinking (or at least attempts it) that they are actually going to get a good deal (they are not, this is a digital ‘good’ that has no value), and does everything the ‘predatory mobile game’ cookbook suggests.
Now, when the Player makes an exceptionally special item (and makes it for free, thanks to it being made during the tutorial) they are told that it is special… But, because the tutorial is still in effect, they have a limited field of opportunity to play (or none at all), resulting in the potential to attempt to keep the item, but in the ultimate possibility that it will not be kept, on account of the game not caring which items it forces the Player to sell while teaching them how to play the game. So, in the process of teaching the Player how to play, the game horribly disregards what the Player will want - to save their very rare item - and forces them to sell it.
That is an exceptional misstep, because the Player, who is supposedly being wooed by the game, is disregarded and disrespected in such a vile manner that it’s almost hurtful - that, coupled with the instant advertisement… Really leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth, and winds up undoing all the effort the game’s tutorial has put into lying to the Player that the game will be like this - quick crafting, easy stuff, an abundance of resources - because it has just undercut the Player horribly on something particular.
So the game’s tutorial, while capable of teaching the Player how to play the game, winds up failing at its ultimate goal - to get the Player reeled in so as to potentially make them spend money.
0/3
Story
This game has no story. It has a premise - an unknown fellow (the Player’s Character) arrives in a small town and gets their hands on a shop. That shop is super abandoned and old, but after a quick dusting everyone in the town starts helping with it. Time to generate profits!
Meanwhile, the grand heroes of the town get involved with the shopkeeper, netting resources for ‘em. These grand heroes have their own little tales that have no bearing on, really, anything. They are neat, they are kinda funky, but at the same time there is such an immense reliance on tropes in said stories that one might be invited to cringe rather than to enjoy them.
1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? No, it does not. It could have been a funky way to spend one’s time on a phone, if it were not so thoroughly lacking in every single regard. 0/1
Conclusion
2/10. Shop Titans is a steaming pile of fecal matter that has been painted to look exceptionally appealing, but ultimately remains excrement. The artwork for this game is its most redeeming quality, and if someone likes the way it looks, they can go on to explore it, though there is absolutely no substance within this art. It is vapid, lukewarm air. A dreadful phone game made to suck out the Player’s money and time, which fails at doing shop management so profoundly that literally any other game that’s about managing a store is better in every regard.
On the wall of shame I place this game. A terrible reminder that mobile games are bad by design.