Overall good game but priced a bit too high for it's playtime. I'd price it $10-15 so look for sales! I took my time with things and still finished in < 20 hours.

They have a demo which is a good feel for the main gameplay loop, so give that a try. The story, while initially felt 'in the way' of letting me manage my shop, became more interesting over time and something I didn't mind doing. Expanding and upgrading your grocery store in the first 10 hours of gameplay is very satisfying, but that does slow down faster than I thought it would.

Now my main criticism comes from things you sort of expect to unlock but never come. I'll try not to spoil the story elements but will spoil store upgrades in this complaint: After unlocking your first employee, there's mention of them not being old enough yet to run the cash register so they can only stock shelves but you never hire/unlock a second employee let alone be able to modify or customize your employee's logic/priority. An NPC mentions automization and robotics for the grocery store but nothing ever comes of it. So after a faster scanner and 1 employee the unlocks are finished.

And semi-spoiler but there's no real 'reward' after completing the final, long quest chain. That was really disappointing to not get a larger store, new items, or upgraded shop features. There are hints throughout the story that would aid well to more Chapters in the game and I'm hopeful the devs are considering that.

EDIT - Changing to recommend but beware for bugs. The store clerk's arrival is random at best and restarting the game from a save file seems to fix it so I'm positive it's not intended. There's a number of somewhat clunky things like that but if you don't mind some occasional re-loads then this game could be really fun. I'll give it another go co-op and see if there's enough staying power with friends.

Too soon to give a good review and will update as I muscle through but in the demo the hardware merchant is almost never at the shop even during the listed times so the first two days were mostly spent waiting for that npc to show up to progress. Bad first taste.

I requested a refund after about 45 minutes. The concept is cool and I don't mind the old graphics, but this game becomes a 'party movement' simulator more than a healing simulator. Your AI party won't avoid telestrations at all and the UI makes it hard to know when you're healing an ally or damaging an enemy.

I lost to the 2nd boss twice not because I oomed or got unlucky skills, but that the boss requires most of your actions to be focused on moving your party around the room to avoid his attacks. Not just you, mind you, your party.

If you don't mind that or even enjoy commanding all your AI teammates in real-time, then this game could still be for you, but it's not for me. If/when they implement movement into the AI skillset of your team, then it'd be a cute $10 game. But right now it's far too technical like a Dark Souls but with poor movement ability.

Honestly one of my favorite chill games. Playing on peaceful mode still offers a bit of intense food and inventory management but you quickly start to ramp up both your food production and your inventory space and the game turns into a relaxing upgrade/builder/management game. So fun! I'd say I've beaten it at this point though, but for 8 hours of chill game time, it's well worth it.

3 years ago when a friend and I tried to play this game, port forwarding was the only way to play together and the challenges we faced were massive. For the record, we've done port fowarding before for other games back then.

Now, 3 years later, we still have issues. The new game seems to have a hosted multiplayer built into the game but even when creating a private server (NOT P2P) neither of us could see each other's games. I read the forumns to try and solve by ensuring we had the right characters (both seasonal, both not hardcore) and nothing.

The game may be fun when you actually get into play but the inability for multiplayer to work well is an absoulte deal breaker. Other clear gaps in good user design are things like not showing what password requirements are upfront or not having a "Create" button when making a new character. You have to know to just press the 'enter' key after typing your character's name in.