Little Shop of Treasures

Moby ID: 28580
Windows Specs

Description

Your goal in this game is to build up your own Little Shop of Treasures, but to finance this you must also work one-off shifts in various other shops and marketplaces. Wherever you are, the basic gameplay is the same; customers come in and request particular items, which you must find (in pictorial form) and click on for them to receive. In total there are 12 locations, with 1200 items between them.

Each level has a total of 15 customers, with a minimum success target of 10 - any others are a bonus. A maximum of five customers are in the shop at a time, so new customers are constantly added to the display at the bottom until you've cleared 11. To discourage random click-and-hope play, the pointer is temporarily deactivated if you make 3 successive clicks on the wrong items.

To help locate the items there is a 'Hint' feature, which shows the images of the objects in place of the names. You start with one on each level, but can activate more by finding the hidden ?s.

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Credits (Windows version)

20 People

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 1 ratings)

Players

Average score: 1.8 out of 5 (based on 1 ratings)

A lot of nothing - too slow-placed and generally tedious

The Good
There's a good variety of screen layouts and objects (although a more focused game design, with you choosing a retail area to target, might've worked better).

The Bad
It's a pure memory-test. Game designers have been criticised for emphasizing memory elements in games for many years - the hazards you couldn't've predicted in platform games, the illogical puzzles you will die on once before clearing them in adventure games, football management games where only one tactical system works, and so on. Sadly, in Casual Game land, they don't seem to have realised this.

The whole thing is too slow-paced. 3 minutes to find 10-15 items is too long. Having less time but slightly less obscured items would have made the game much more thrilling. The hint drawings would be more useful if they are bit more in proportion.

I know there's a Blitz mode, but it takes a long time to unlock that. It's annoying enough when racing games lock most of the circuits until you've completed them, but this takes it to another level, as the Blitz mode could save the game.

The stock of the various shops is quite illogical - harmonicas for sale in a farm shop, onions in a gardening shop, and pretzels almost everywhere. That pretty much scuppers it as an educational tool.

The shop element could have been used more. If items had different values, or there was a time limit on each individual customer, you could decide which ones to focus on and which ones to sacrifice, a lá Burger Rush. The upgrades you choose could have had a direct effect on the business' custom - instead, you get a fixed 15 customers on each level.

The Bottom Line
This one falls short in every major area. It's too slow to be action, too superficial to be strategy, and too illogical to be educational. It's one of those games that you could only enjoy if you've never seen a major commercial game. No wonder there are no ingame credits, unlike virtually every other modern shareware game - I wouldn't want people to know that I was behind it.

Windows · by Martin Smith (81669) · 2007

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 28580
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Martin Smith.

J2ME, iPhone added by Kabushi. Macintosh added by me3D31337.

Game added June 15, 2007. Last modified February 22, 2023.