I'm marking this as recommended but realistically I'd prefer to put it down as "mixed".

I follow this dev online and I genuinely adore their art, both on their socials and within this game. Honestly, the graphics/artstyle is that main thing this game has going for it. Other than that, it's kind of a glorified cookie clicker; and I don't mean this to be mean I just want to be honest about the gameplay loop.
I think many people, especially from the cutscene in the ad, may think this is some kind of "item selling game" but that is not correct. You will find items on the ground, labeled as one of 3 rarities which come down to essentially bronze, silver, and gold rarity. Each time you find one of said item it will make a number on your UI go up. You can then go sell those items at certain markets throughout the area you reside, and each area buys and sells for different prices every day. The point of the game is simply to get your money to go up as high as possible through this loop.

That's all well and fine, even though I thought it would be more in-depth than that, but my mixed feeling about it comes from the lack of polish in every system in the game. There is a distinct lack of feedback in everything you do. Searching the forest for junk? No animation for searching and no noise or feedback for picking it up other than a text prompt. Buying and selling things to the stores in each town? No audio or visual feedback other than numbers on your UI going up or down.
This disappointed me more than most any other thing in the game. I understand that my expectations were higher than the game called for going in, but to not even make small jingles for the stores or feedback for interacting with certain things in the environment felt very lazy to me. I don't want to use that word, as making any type of experience like this is frankly amazing. As someone I liked to quote said "The worst videogame you've ever played is a miracle". I believe this with all my heart, but still... this game just lacks a lot of that polish that I expect from *any* gaming experience, indie or otherwise.


And to add to that, I just didn't have fun with the gameplay loop. I'm not really a "numbers go up" kind of gamer, I was never huge on Cookie Clicker or NGU so this game didn't hit me well regardless, but the fact that each town has to be unlocked and you're only earning like 1-5 bucks for each sale at the beginning of the game makes it go on for *sooo* long. I mean, the first unlock to a new town is $100. The next is $600. It takes *forever* to grind up to that and the loop just isn't fun enough to make me want to keep playing that long. Maybe if each sale gave more money or the upgrades were less expensive it wouldn't wear on the player so quickly?

Plus you get stolen from all the time cause little bro can't walk to more than 1 place a day, so if you want to come from the forest into town to sell and then sleep in town you get stolen from unless you sleep at an inn (and it happens *every*. *single*. *time*. you sleep outside, not just sometimes). All of it just feels like it was made to frustrate? Idk again I don't want to be rude here but I just don't know why some of these things are in the game. Why can't I travel more than once a day? Why does it take so long to get any upgrades? Why are the items I'm selling so useless? Why must I be stolen from all the time? Couldn't you have made any of these systems just slightly more fun instead of annoying?

I'm ripping into the little game, and I don't want to. The art is very cute and I could see this being a very cozy game if some of the systems were tweaked and a little more polish was added. For only $7 it doesn't feel like a bad purchase if there was a little more here, but for the time being it just feels like 'Why would I load that up?' when I see it.

Personally, I wanted so much from this game so I'm disappointed about more than just the things mentioned in the review, but I want to be fair about the product shown. It isn't some cute little merchant game where you get your own stand and sell cute little low poly items to people that have a want, it's just a numbers go up simulator with low poly visuals. If that sounds fun to you, I could recommend this. If the lack of polish sounds annoying but you still like numbers go up games maybe wait for a sale. If you wanted something like Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, even vageuely, Merchant 64 isn't that and I would temper expectations before buying or diving in.

Thanks for reading this far. If you'd like to follow my curation page it's right HERE !

Best of luck to the dev moving foward! I really hope to see more from you in the future.

nothingburger game