The Shopkeeper

Repetitive and pointless. The art looks nice, but the "story" is incoherent.

Its like playing a version of groundhog day where you watch a man get belittled by his mother in law over and over again, slowly dying inside only to wonder whats this all for, whats it all about. Well i think i have the answer finally and its this... Its a waste of time go do something better than play this.

[h1]Summary[/h1] Very short repetitive point and click narrative with barely any gameplay and mundane story. [b]Pros[/b] + Unique [b]Cons[/b] - Repetitive - Not much gameplay [h1]Overview[/h1] The Shopkeeper is a very short and repetitive barely point & click narrative game, each playthrough is simply a repeat of short interactions between an antiques shopkeeper telling stories of an item with a young business man and later the latter with his mother in law. Each playthrough takes about 5 minutes or so and after 1 go you pretty much get the gist of the game. [b]Story[/b] Although the game is titled The Shopkeeper he is not particularly involved in the story other than someone that starts off the story of the young businessman and his interactions with his mother in law as they are more the focus. The story has different endings and a few differing interactions based on your choices but overall there isn't much and so each playthrough will have you going through the same dialogues and interactions. There kind of is a story going on between the young businessman and his mother in law but its so short and not a lot is told from the interactions and every playthrough that you don't really get invested in their story or relationship. [b]Gameplay[/b] Barely any gameplay at all. There is only about 3 scenes and you click around some items to get some story told about them, then there's the short dialogues with choices you pick before it all ends and you start a new playthrough to check out other items or try other dialogue choices. Achievements are rather annoying as you need to do certain specific things to get them. [hr][/hr] If you find my reviews useful do follow my [b][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/11028547-Dods-Echo-Chamber/]Curator[/url][/b] page for more!

Point-and-click story game. You are a young man with a business that is in trouble, and you're trying to get help from your mother-in-law. Toward this end you're visiting an antique shop looking for a gift to put her in a good mood. The shopkeeper has a story to tell about every single item in his shop. After examining an item, talk with the mother-in-law to attempt to persuade her. An interesting concept with annoying execution. You will wind up doing the same sequence over and over and over and over again: walk into shop, hear story about item, walk into mother-in-law's office, pick item in room to discuss, have conversation, more often than not get turned down. The conversations can be skipped through, but they're still lengthy. Charting the different conversation paths alone isn't sufficient to get a successful outcome. I eventually found a walkthrough to explain what I had to do to get what. I kept asking myself, "Why is this necessary?" The stories the shopkeeper has for the items, and the suggestion of his own backstory, are intriguing, but hearing one involves the entire sequence of events. Why can't the guy just stand there and find out about each and every item? If for whatever reason he's not going to ask about an item, why must he go to the shop at all each iteration? And why involve the florist? Some people have compared the game to [I]Groundhog Day[/I]. I disagree. Part of the fun with Groundhog Day was seeing the poor sap dealing with having to go through his day over and over again. In this case, the player is the poor sap; the people in the game seem just fine. Perhaps this is artistic intent, and therefore fiendishly effective; all things considered, though, if I want recreational frustrating repetition I'll go play Getting Over It. I got it through HB. I only recommend it if you can get it for almost free.

Very tedious and repetitive.

A little bit of TLC would have gone a long way for this game. A few more dialogue options and a bit more variation would have really lifted it up. 5/10.