Small Shop Reviews

I think it has potential but here are a few suggestions I have for the game. One is to change the 10 coin to a 25, and add a $10 bill. It would make giving change back a lot faster. Another is money storage. Maybe consider adding a small box next to you to store the money that you get in, as bills will just overlap each other and you have to remove all money given on the desk in order to give change back, which can be a bit slow. One other thing is to work on the dollar overlapping, as it can be a bit frustrating when dollars intermingle, as it's much harder to grab dollars when they constantly overlap each other. You could maybe consider adding a cash register. It doesn't haven't to be super realistic of course, but it could help to add a sense of realism to your shop. It could be added in an additional gameplay mode if you don't the faster pace of the game to slow down. You could also consider credit transactions. It could be a way to mix-up the gameplay and make the player react to more than just tender. It would also be interesting if you could be able to maintain your shop, such as stocking inventory during closing, or to customize your shop. Of course these are a lot of things I just listed off, and some ideas may deviate from the game's want of a fast paced wave-based customer kind of thing, but I think they could help make the game more playable and can hold the players's attention for longer. But either or this is my overly long review of Small Shop.

Edit: I took another look after the most recent update. Kudos! Things have definitely improved, but you've still got a few bugs, and the implementation of some of the features need some tweaking. 1. Thank you for adding a form of locomotion controls. Unfortunately, it is implemented in such a way that does not allow you to teleport while holding any objects, which does defeat the purpose of being able to grab items and move back to the counter. Smooth locomotion options would still be nice to have as well. 2. The cash physics is waaay better. Thanks for fixing that. 3. The 3 minute day also feels a lot better. Thanks for changing that. 4. There is a sphere around the users head in which everything becomes invisible. This sphere has its uses, I understand. But, it's much too large, as if you're standing close to the counter, shelves, or holding money close to you, then it clips into these objects and causes disorientation. 5. Currently, the ramen/noodle product, when grabbed from the shelf, or anywhere, doesn't come to your hand, but instead appears in the air very significantly to the left and in front of the player. This may be the case with other products as well, but I only tested the cookies and noodles. 6. The grabbing of items is very finicky, and you must have your hand in just the right spot to pick up an object or product. Consider increasing the hitbox of the players hands, or objects. 7. I experienced an odd bug where I wasn't able to pick up $5 bills for the first day, but it regained functionality on the next shift/day. I was not able to replicate it All in all, things have definitely improved, but there's still quite a bit of work to get the game feeling like it's ready to be played. I think it could be a lot of fun if you are able to continue to work on these things. [strike]This game was not ready for release and needs a lot of polishing. Here are my gripes: 1. There are no locomotion controls, so you'd better have a very large play space to be able to actually play 2. The physics for the cash is janky. Most of the time, grabbing a bill off a stack scatters bills all around it, and can make using cash to give change very frustrating. 3. What shop keeper in their right mind keeps stacks of cash under the counter like that anyways? Consider adding a cash register. 4. In the modern age of plastic, it would be nice to have some of the customers using a credit card. Consider adding a card reader as an upgrade for the shop, to allow you to serve more customers in less time. 5. In the intro messages, it says a day is supposed to represent a 10 hour shift, but a day is only a few minutes long and only allows you to serve between 3 to 5 customers. Consider lengthening the amount of time in a day to achieve a more realistic feel.[/strike]