Pixel Shopkeeper Review – Climbing Out Of Debt

Pixel Shopkeeper is a management sim that goes old school with its graphics and sound. Does it do enough to stand out from the crowd, or should the shopkeeping be left to others? Check out our Pixel Shopkeeper review and see how we felt about the game.

Pixel Shopkeeper Review

When you start the game, you create a character that is about to graduate from school. Right after school, you take a loan (well, you are forced to take a loan) to open up a store front on an unknown island. 50 grand in the hole, you are now tasked with paying off your debt little by little. Each week, the amount you have to pay goes up, starting small and eventually getting up to around 10 grand at the end. While that is initially your main priority, building up your store and your character is another huge part of Pixel Shopkeeper. You start with a tiny little store with no shelves, tables, or extra decorations. It will take you around eight hours to pay off your loan, but that isn’t the end. After you pay off the first store, you can open a second and keep going from there if you choose.

There are two major components to running a shop in Pixel Shopkeeper. You have to manage your inventory and space in your store. Certain items sell for more gold, but that does not always mean they are going to sell. You need to pick and choose what you are going to be putting up to maximize your profit. Anyone can buy anything, but a warrior is more likely to buy a piece of warrior equipment. If no warriors show up and you overstock the warrior equipment, you won’t make much money. The other part is what tables and shelves you put up. Weapon tables increase weapon sales, armor tables increase armor sales, and so on. With limited space in your shop, you have to pick and choose what tables you are putting down. You can put any tables you don’t want in storage or sell them back if you want to change them out, so you can switch up what you are selling each day. Eventually, you will have enough space to fill your stores with tables and more products then you can sell in one day.

Of course, without a product to sell, you aren’t making money and that’s where dungeons come into play. Dungeons are auto scrolls, so you don’t actually do any fighting; you just use items to buff or heal yourself. You are busy managing your tiny backpack to fit as much equipment inside as you can to bring back to your store. You won’t bring everything back, so you will have to pick and choose what items you are most interested in. The items are shaped in all sorts of weird ways making the backpack management a challenge in itself. You can buy new backpacks that are larger or that have special perks as well. For instance, some of them double the items that you put in that slot or a tile sells an item right away for 75% of its value. You can equip your character with new weapons and armor to help you get through the harder dungeons. One issue I take with this is the fact that your character always uses a sword, regardless of the weapon equipped.

One last thing you have to work on is befriending your customer types. There are plenty of customer types in the game, ranging from ninjas to bards, and each one has certain types of item they are interested in buying. You can befriend them more by doing quests for them or by hanging out with them in the park each weekend. The higher your friendship level gets with a certain customer type will unlock new items for your shop. After hanging out with them at the park, they will also hand over items or recipes as well. The best part about going to the park is that it doesn’t waste your day, so you can still sell items and go dungeon diving on the weekends.

While you are selling items, there are also other things going on. For instance, you can craft new items which will sell for much more than those in a dungeon. This equipment is also the best stuff to equip on your guy, so you have to choose the gold or an easier time in dungeons. There is also a farm near your store where you can plant seeds and water them for herbs, crafting supplies, and other healing items. When the store opens, the customers will pass by your storefront and you can click them for words or sometimes they have an item over their head that you can get from them as well. Birds and tumbleweeds pass through as well which you can click for minor amounts of gold. The whole game has a ton of little things going on at all times to keep any player occupied.

Pixel Shopkeeper is a great shop management sim that can take hours away from your life. If you like management sims, then this game should be on your radar.