Capitalism, ho! It's the 10-year Steam/English anniversary of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale!

[werezompire]

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale on Steam

Recettear is the story of an item shop, the girl who lives in it, and the fairy who turned her life upside down. Recette Lemongrass finds herself in charge of an item shop built into her house, in order to pay back a loan her father took and then skipped out on - and Tear, her newfound fairy...

store.steampowered.com

10 years ago on September 10th, Carpe Fulgur's English localization of EasyGameStation's Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale came out on Steam.

Besides spawning a bunch of memes and being an excellent game in its own right (part shop sim, part Action/RPG), it was one of the first JRPGs to be released on Steam and was the first hit indie JRPG on the service. I'm positive that Recettear's success was a big part of why Valve approved our first Steam release a few months later. And I'm sure it played a big part in convincing various big JRPG companies that maybe they should take a second look at this whole Steam thing.

Happy Anniversary! Share your fun Recettear/CarpeFulgur/EasyGameStation memories here. :)

 

[kubev]

Easily one of my all-time favorite games. So much charm. I wish they'd release it on consoles.

That said, it does have its flaws, as its tutorial sort of screws you over, which in turn results in the little nightmare child wrecking unsuspecting players' games.

 

[FluxWaveZ]

This game was fantastic; I still need to replay it one of these days. Excellent localization with a lot of personality and humor, and while I remember the dungeon crawling segments could have been better, the whole game was just fun play. I don't know that any other game has quite executed on the concept of being a JRPG shopkeeper like this one has.

 

[Arsene no Kiseki]

Fuck that little girl that kept trying to lowball me on my bread prices. >:(

 

[Shard Shinjuku]

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale on Steam

Recettear is the story of an item shop, the girl who lives in it, and the fairy who turned her life upside down. Recette Lemongrass finds herself in charge of an item shop built into her house, in order to pay back a loan her father took and then skipped out on - and Tear, her newfound fairy...

store.steampowered.com

10 years ago on September 10th, Carpe Fulgur's English localization of EasyGameStation's Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale came out on Steam.

Besides spawning a bunch of memes and being an excellent game in its own right (part shop sim, part Action/RPG), it was one of the first JRPGs to be released on Steam and was the first hit indie JRPG on the service. I'm positive that Recettear's success was a big part of why Valve approved our first Steam release a few months later. And I'm sure it played a big part in convincing various big JRPG companies that maybe they should take a second look at this whole Steam thing.

Happy Anniversary! Share your fun Recettear/CarpeFulgur/EasyGameStation memories here. :)

Click to shrink...

Carpe Fulgur was the first video game outfit I ever interview and that led to a pivot into doing I suppose for a lack of a better term a full bore focus on video game journalism.

 

[radioactivez0r]

I love that it spawned a whole subgenre of similar games

 

[Spoit]

I love that it spawned a whole subgenre of similar games

Click to shrink...

Do you have links to any of them?

 

[Cyclonesweep]

I liked this game far more than I ever should of

 

[.exe]

This was one of my earlier games on Steam. Really loved it. I think I finished it within the span of a few days. It's kind of a blur now. I vividly recall being very happy about getting a Japanese game on Steam though, so that checks out. How far things have come! It's still not perfect or always day and date, but it's gotten a lot better.

I looked into my purchase history, and I picked it up in the 2011 summer sale. And I got Breath of Death + Cthulhu Saves the World on July 13th, just a couple of weeks after ;)

 

[Poppy]

what a crazy success this game was, i really love it

 

[WestEgg]

It's a nice fun little game, really enjoyed my playthrough

 

[Hybrid Rainbow]

Do you have links to any of them?

Click to shrink...

Games like Moonlighter and Holy Potatoes are similar. Recettear is the OG though.

 

[SnazzyNaz]

Do you have links to any of them?

Click to shrink...

Weapon Shop de Omasse

 

[Richietto]

A great game. Can't wait for that potion crafting game to get my shop keeper fix.

 

[RoadDogg]

I need to play this again, I bought this during one of the first steam winter sales for super cheap and only put a couple hours into it. I loved what I played but couldn't spend the time on it then.

 

[HylianSeven]

Fuck that little girl that kept trying to lowball me on my bread prices. >:(

Click to shrink...

 

[Elliot Pudge]

always hurts my soul that moonlighter scuffed the shop mechanics for their game

 

[Ferrio]

Do you have links to any of them?

Click to shrink...

Barn Finders. It's like Redneck Racettear. Maybe not your thing, but it exists.

Save 45% on Barn Finders on Steam

Search for valuable items stashed in abandoned barns. Take part in storage auctions, bid high and buy yourself a chance to find exclusive items hidden in the past.

store.steampowered.com

 

[waugh]

Considering how good this game is I think it's a real shame EGS is basically dead. I wonder where all the staff are now. It would be amazing if they decided to come back and resurrect EGS as an indie studio. Make a remake of Recettear for PC and modern consoles their first product. Sadly they'd need someone to fund it and I doubt they'd be interested in going the kickstarter route.

 

[HustleBun]

Please tell me they're putting this on Switch.

The OG game crashes for me every time I try to load it from Steam. I've uninstalled it, tried different settings, it's so frustrating. I would also just love to play it from a mobile or handheld device.

 

[a glitch]

Please tell me they're putting this on Switch.

The OG game crashes for me every time I try to load it from Steam. I've uninstalled it, tried different settings, it's so frustrating. I would also just love to play it from a mobile or handheld device.

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No plans to do so, and like waugh said the devs are not really active anymore, and I think the people in Carpe Fulgar now work on the Trails series for whoever localises that in the west these days. disregard this part, they only worked on Trails in the Sky SC.

It's a shame we never got Territoire but apparently EasyGameStation made a 2d platformer since then? I'm curious to try it considering how much I enjoyed Recettear.

 

[HustleBun]

No plans to do so, and like waugh said the devs are not really active anymore, and I think the people in Carpe Fulgar now work on the Trails series for whoever localises that in the west these days.

It's a shame we never got Territoire but apparently EasyGameStation made a 2d platformer since then? I'm curious to try it considering how much I enjoyed Recettear.

Click to shrink...

Sucks.

I hate seeing this series left to die. Would be nice to at least see an update or a port so it can be enjoyed on another platform.

Thanks for the info.

 

[zulux21]

I love that it spawned a whole subgenre of similar games

Click to shrink...

I so wish this was true but I've yet to find anything that scratches that same itch.

I have high hopes for http://potionomics.com/ to finally be that spiritual successor to Recettear I've been waiting 10 years for :P

Barn Finders. It's like Redneck Racettear. Maybe not your thing, but it exists.

Save 45% on Barn Finders on Steam

Search for valuable items stashed in abandoned barns. Take part in storage auctions, bid high and buy yourself a chance to find exclusive items hidden in the past.

store.steampowered.com

Click to shrink...

I however have not looked into this one yet.

 

[ps3ud0]

What 10 years?!? My last full steam game before I went console. Still don't know the right pronunciation...

I swear it was on the Mac Steam client as well.

ps3ud0 8)

 

[pezzie]

Capitalism, ho!

 

[ExtremelyBitter]

I couldn't believe it had been that long so went to try to figure out when I bought it, since I thought it was pretty shortly post-release, and I now feel kind of guilty about how little I paid:

IIRC Recettear was the entire reason for my interest in that bundle. Man I miss old Steam sales.

 

[werezompire]

I think the people in Carpe Fulgar now work on the Trails series for whoever localises that in the west these days.

Click to shrink...

No, they did some work on Sky SC with XSeed, but I don't think they've worked on any of the other games since then. Since Recettear, they've done various other Japanese indie localizations and I also believe they worked on a recent Gundam game.

 

[Shinobido Heart]

It's already been 10 years?

I still remember the game as if I played it yesterday. x_x

I need to beat Chantelise and Fortune Summoners on my to-do list, the two other games they localized in the Carpe Fulgur bundle.

 

[Theswweet]

No plans to do so, and like waugh said the devs are not really active anymore, and I think the people in Carpe Fulgar now work on the Trails series for whoever localises that in the west these days.

It's a shame we never got Territoire but apparently EasyGameStation made a 2d platformer since then? I'm curious to try it considering how much I enjoyed Recettear.

Click to shrink...

No, they haven't worked on the Trails series since SC - a job they botched so horribly that not only did it severely delay the release of the localization, but much of their work was summarily thrown out.

 

[Shizuka]

I really enjoyed this game, it was one of the few JRPGs available on Steam way back when and it definitely blew up thanks to that.

 

[Manac0r]

Translated by a goon if I remember correctly... spent many, many hours with this gem. Will raise a cold one in celebration of 10 years of CAPITALISM! HO!

 

[chrominance]

I couldn't believe it had been that long so went to try to figure out when I bought it, since I thought it was pretty shortly post-release, and I now feel kind of guilty about how little I paid:

IIRC Recettear was the entire reason for my interest in that bundle. Man I miss old Steam sales.

Click to shrink...

Fun fact: I am a dumb-dumb and had something different written up here about how Carpe Fulgur handled this bundle, but you're better off reading the story straight from the horse's mouth. Long story short: if they could've done things differently, they would have! Also, Carpe Fulgur thinks a LOT of people only bought this bundle because of Recettear.

 

[SxP]

To this day, I often think of "Capitalism, ho!". It's just so universally applicable.

 

[a glitch]

No, they did some work on Sky SC with XSeed, but I don't think they've worked on any of the other games since then. Since Recettear, they've done various other Japanese indie localizations and I also believe they worked on a recent Gundam game.

Click to shrink...

Ah OK, I probably saw them saying 'holy shit we're working on TiTS' and assumed they continued working on that since then. I'll correct my post, thanks!

No, they haven't worked on the Trails series since SC - a job they botched so horribly that not only did it severely delay the release of the localization, but much of their work was summarily thrown out.

Click to shrink...

Did a bit of googling about this, and it seems that someone on the CF team got hit with depression while working on SC, which I'm assuming led to the delay. Damn, that's rough since IIRC they were stoked to be working on Trails.

Translated by a goon if I remember correctly... spent many, many hours with this gem. Will raise a cold one in celebration of 10 years of CAPITALISM! HO!

Click to shrink...

At least one of them was a goon, I remember them making the Recettear thread on Something Awful.

 

[Tagyhag]

Awesome game, and really was around the time Steam started to explode with games as well.

 

[ExtremelyBitter]

Fun fact: I am a dumb-dumb and had something different written up here about how Carpe Fulgur handled this bundle, but you're better off reading the story straight from the horse's mouth. Long story short: if they could've done things differently, they would have! Also, Carpe Fulgur thinks a LOT of people only bought this bundle because of Recettear.

Click to shrink...

Ooof. I feel bad for them, because I'm pretty sure I was in that 'buying the bundle for Recettear' group.

 

[Deleted member 4212]

I played this game for like 10 hours straight when it came out. The gameplay loop is too powerful. I miss having free time.

 

[Emerald Hawk]

Great game, I bought it on day 2 from Gamersgate. My wife wrote a review for Tor.com that you can read here. This was back when Tor.com paid their bloggers a small amount, so she's technically a professional video game reviewer.


I enjoyed Moonlighter more recently. I didn't mind that Moonlighter focused more on the combat than on the retail side of things, since I like the action adventure portion more anyway.

 

[Darkmaigle]

my wife still talks about this game to the day, she never found any of the similar titles quite as engaging

 

[chrominance]

Ooof. I feel bad for them, because I'm pretty sure I was in that 'buying the bundle for Recettear' group.

Click to shrink...

If it's any consolation, they posted a follow-up saying they still sold a ton of copies and made more money off Recettear than they ever imagined, so it's not like they were hurting at the time or anything. They just figured that maybe they should've tried putting the game on sale for $5 on its own before putting it into a bundle.

 

[chrominance]

Oh, also worth mentioning: I loved this game so much that I went looking for other games like it and at the time found basically nothing... except Atelier Rorona. Now the Atelier franchise is one of my favourite video game franchises.

 

[Jintor]

I played this again a few months back and it still holds up. Moonlighter still doesn't hold a candle to it, either.

Hope one day there's a sequel

 

[squall23]

And here I am sitting here still waiting for Territoire.

 

[Log!]

I remember it being one of the early Steam indie darlings of the 2010s alongside games like Amnesia, Super Meat Boy, and VVVVVV. It was also one of the first games I played when I got back into PC gaming, but couldn't finish it due to life getting in the way.

I think the feelings of nostalgia this thread triggered has convinced me to give it and a bunch of other games another go.

 

[Magnemania]

This is a really fun little fantasy optimization game, but the dungeon crawling aspect is the weaker half of the game; weird that Moonlighter focused on it.

I wish more games in this genre were less hard-sim and more small-scale like Recettear.

 

[kubev]

I enjoyed Moonlighter more recently. I didn't mind that Moonlighter focused more on the combat than on the retail side of things, since I like the action adventure portion more anyway.

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Yeah, honestly, the adventure segments in Recettear are really only average at best, so I can see someone preferring Moonlighter to Recettear. For me, Recettear was so much more exciting while manning the shop, though. I'd love to have a game like Recettear in which you competed with other player-run shops that existed within the economy of an MMO or something. It'd be cool to just hire adventurers (controlled by other players, of course) and let them worry about going through dungeons, with shopkeepers making offers to purchase loot from them or maybe even barter with other perks.

 

[Razgriz417]

man i loved this game

 

[Emerald Hawk]

Yeah, honestly, the adventure segments in Recettear are really only average at best, so I can see someone preferring Moonlighter to Recettear. For me, Recettear was so much more exciting while manning the shop, though. I'd love to have a game like Recettear in which you competed with other player-run shops that existed within the economy of an MMO or something. It'd be cool to just hire adventurers (controlled by other players, of course) and let them worry about going through dungeons, with shopkeepers making offers to purchase loot from them or maybe even barter with other perks.

Click to shrink...

Heh, I actually did this in Eve Online for several months =). I had 5 different investors from my alliance (CVA) finance my inventory and ran goods from Jita to Providence on a weekly basis. I actually paid everyone back when I quit (and never missed an interest payment), so it was one of the few investments in that game that wasn't a scam.

I think this sort of gameplay only emerges in an MMO like Eve where losses are real and you can't just teleport all your possessions anywhere you want. Otherwise being a "Merchant" in most MMO's is kind of pointless and not profitable.

 

[zulux21]

Oh, also worth mentioning: I loved this game so much that I went looking for other games like it and at the time found basically nothing... except Atelier Rorona. Now the Atelier franchise is one of my favourite video game franchises.

Click to shrink...

The Atelier franchise scratches a bit of the itch. As I posted earlier I'm still hoping http://potionomics.com/ turns out well and truly hits that itch.

It's heavily inspired by recettear and they aren't afraid to admit as much :P

 

[Fat4all]

yayifications