Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale

Platform: PC (Windows)
Genre: Action/RPG/Simulation
Developer: EasyGameStation
Publisher: Carpe Fulgur
Release: 10 September 2010
Rating: n/a
Price: $20

One thing that always bugged me when playing RPGs was how shopkeepers would never just give you stuff, even though you were trying to save the world. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale made me realize why. The game puts you on the other side of the counter, where there's no point to saving the world if you're left broke afterward.
Having been saddled with an enormous debt by her missing father, Recette converts her house into a shop, to sell items and equipment to the townspeople and to adventurers passing through. To make the money you need to meet the weekly payments, you'll have to buy, sell at a profit, and hire adventurers to escort you into various dungeons.
The gameplay combines standard trading-simulation game mechanics with top-down action-RPG dungeon-crawling, and it works surprisingly well. There are several adventurers to befriend and hire, each with a unique play-style, and hundreds of different items to find and sell.
That's pretty much all there is to Recettear, and it can get very repetitive after a while. But so many things about the game, from its lovable characters, to its brightly-colored world, to its whimsical story, are all so charming and downright fun.
For the amount of play I got out of Recettear, $20 on Steam was a fantastic deal.
Play, save, and enjoy. See you next week.

--Kotaro