Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!

In terms of gameplay, this plays out in similar fashion to Game Dev Tycoon. You choose something to create, assign workers to stations, and their work is simulated over time, contributing points based on their job and skills. Each weapon is rated out of Attack, Speed, Accuracy, and Magic. Each type of weapon has different "growth rates" so Axes increase attack faster, Daggers specialise in speed, Bows for accuracy, and Wands for magic. Better weapons have greater increases and cost more/rarer base materials.

Workers level up and can switch Job roles which are required to progress through the skill tree. Switching roles initially reduces your attributes but increases as you level up in that role and also allows higher tier job unlocks when you max out the prerequisite roles.

As you progress through the story, the game's mechanics are introduced, and your capacity expands. You acquire a dog that wanders about automatically, but later can be assigned to a station; he boosts morale. When you get the main character avatar, he can boost productivity of workers at the station you assign.

You send your staff out to buy materials, sell weapons, go on holiday, train, or explore. Holiday restores morale, training was rarely needed, shopping was essential early on, but then replaced by exploring which gains materials and relics which are vital. Exploration and Bartering skill are other aspects that can be levelled up.

Relics are chosen when your weapon is completed, and boosts the attributes further. During creation, you can choose an attribute to boost based on the selected staff member's attributes.

You sell weapons to a group of adventurers in a city, with each area having multiple cities, but are unlocked by acquiring tickets via your progress. You complete objectives to gain reputation and allows you to move your shop to the next area. Each area also allows higher level decorations and upgrades for your shop that boost the gains slightly.

There are 4 adventurers in the cities, and you are told their weapon preference and which attributes they prefer. Matching their preferences gives you a higher sale price, and also levels them up quicker. Levelling up the adventurers is often an objective to progress.

There are "contracts" too which are timed events. Sometimes the weapon requirements are very loose but others can be more specific. I found many of the timings to be quite restrictive. Sometimes it is beneficial to have a stock of various weapons so sometimes you can just hand them over straight away. Parody game characters can request a special weapon like a Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy 7) character wanting his Buster Sword. These aren't timed events but require large attributes. Early on these are a challenge and you have to be smart with your assignments, boosts and relic choices. Near the end, they are way too easy.

The difficulty curve is where the game falters. The last few hours of the game is too easy because you can buy better stations, hire more, and superior workers; so the weapons you make seem exponentially better than the ones you were making hours prior, then end up with an abundance of money and don't need to put any thought into the weapons you are making. It took me 13 hours to complete which was a bit of a drag, when 9-10 hours would be a better length.