Shop Titans is a free to play shop management game. In Shop Titans you sell a variety of wares to customers in a fantasy realm.
Whilst the concept of this game is based around running a shop in a fantasy realm is a decent idea for a game. The way that the game is monetized and operates isn’t as good as the game’s concept. Essentially Shop Titans is your average facebook game but instead of managing a café/any other business. In this game you are managing a fantasy shop,adventurers and a town.
Firstly if this was a single player game that was based around the player. Then I think it would be a reasonable enough game. However, this game is actually based around grinding in groups of people. All players in the group must put in the same level of commitment in order to accomplish goals. Whether it is making items or donating items to boost a local worker or guild mate. In this game you start off alone but you will join another clan of players that will help each other.
But getting into a good guild isn’t really a task that is easy. To join a guild you will be shown guilds that are aimed at your player level. This is unless you to find a guild yourself, then you join by another player’s username. Inevitably the global chat does have players posting clan adverts in a bid to attract new guild members.
Whilst there is a lot of guilds in the game, that are advertising for new members in the global chat. This really is a bad thing as many players are in various stages in the game. Firstly there are guilds that are new to the game that just want new players to join them. There are also players which are the medium sized guilds, many of which are recruiting to develop their city. Lastly, there are the top guilds which are trying to take from the other guilds.
One thing to consider with guilds is whenever a player does a join a guild. Players will be either inactive, leeching off other players or committing heavily into the game. Also whenever a player leaves all the resources they have donated goes with them. This is detrimental if a high level player who has invested heavily into the city does quit the game. This can be in some cases capable of breaking a guild.
To add to the ever growing amount of guilds there is a constant surge of players quitting the game. Whether it is newbie’s quitting because they have ran into a wall. There is also mid level players quitting because their guild is inactive. Thus being an exercise in futility for them to continue. It is even top level players who quit the game. Even after a player has invested many hours and cash into the game. In the end many will burn out and quit the game.
For the most part this is a shop management game. However, there are quests that you can send heroes onto. For the most part quests are a side job. The quests are mostly there so you can earn hard to find resources and loot boxes. But in order to do quests your heroes need equipment that you have created to use on quests. The items you give them will be of use only for so long until it breaks. In this game it is wise to use equipment that is of the highest level that they can use. But at the same time it is best to use easily made equipment that isn’t in demand.
There is also the heroes themselves which have their own requirements for equipment. As this game does have a system of what each class uses. To add to the equipment requirements in this game. Some equipment that you may require is locked behind paywall(s). As a result of this I only used heroes that used equipment that I could make.
Microtransactions are a constant feature in this game. At every turn it is openly mentioned in various forms including items and gems. Whether it is a seasonal blueprint/cosmetic, items that you need to boost your crafting/collections or removing a cool down period. Even some of the workers are stuck behind pay walls which are up to $29.99 each. There is even a monthly subscription that you can subscribe too, that offers various benefits for subscribing too. The greed of the developers is clear as day. However, as this is a free to play game it wasn’t too surprising. Since most free to play games are full of microtransactions.
However, I think that this game is particularly egregious. To me this is most notable with some of the workers in this game. This is because some workers need to bought with real world currency. To add to this on steam one of the achievements is to unlock all the workers. Inevitably if you aren’t going to buy the locked workers you will not be able to get this achievement. Which I think is bad as you should be able to unlock every achievement without paying for extras. Despite the fact this is a free to play game. In the long run this is an expensive game to play once you get past the optional microtransactions.
Inevitably I think that Shop Titans isn’t worth playing on. I think this because Shop Titans is very upfront about its intentions on getting you buy microtransactions whenever it can. It is a fun game to play on in short periods of time. In the end this game is a limiting experience due to how the game operates.
