Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! is a casual management game from Daylight Studios. Your Grandfather has sadly passed away and he has left you his 0.01% stake in his blacksmith business, you feel you have no choice but to carry on his work and with the help of Agent 46 you try to create the most successful blacksmithing business the world has ever seen! Manage the shop, research new weapons, train up and coming blacksmiths, craft weapons for the World's heroes and so much more, all with the repeated click of a button (you have to do a lot of clicking).

Before I get underway I'd briefly like to mention my first impressions of the game. For the first half an hour or so I really did not like this game at all, it was a tutorial section so nothing was really unlocked yet and it just felt so tedious, click here, click there, make money etc. Thankfully, once more stuff became unlocked, I began to enjoy the game more, to the point where I played it for 4 hours straight. Sadly the game receeds into tedium later on, but more on that later.

+Charming art style
+Good writing and loads of amusing references to other games, movies and music
+A huge number of weapons, of many different types, to research and craft
+Occasionally random events will occur (such as a potato is struggling to cut a sapling down. Help him?) which provide a somewhat interesting break from the main game though this do begin to get repetitive rather quickly
+Most things, from your name to the name's of your weapons, can be named which can be rather amusing if you're good at coming up with funny names
+Nice, relaxing music, which fits well with the game
+The game gives you objectives to complete which helps guide you through the game
+You can upgrade your shop with cosmetic items such as carpets, wallpapers, dog houses etc

+/-The game's UI makes it feel like a mobile game, despite the fact that it's not, probably due to the dev studio mainly working on mobile games. Personally, I don't really mind this but I know it may bother some people

-There's next to no gameplay depth, all it is is researching weapons, followed by sending someone to buy supplies, followed by telling your blacksmiths to craft the weapon and you have to do this again and again and again and again
-For a good few hours the game is pretty interesting, the objectives are still pretty small so they don't take long to complete hence the game flows quickly but once you get into the later stages of the game selling three weapons (the most you can do in one go) only pushes the objective up by around 3% which means you have to grind out the same weapons over and over again which gets incredibly boring (this is the very reason I stopped playing the game)
-Some of the dialogue between your character and Agent 46 is repeated several times which I thought was pretty lazy
-So. Much. Clicking. I've never gotten into any of the clicker games so having to click so much in this game was rather irritating
-No graphical options, no control options and only very basic audio options

Verdict:
Worth Purchasing on Sale (6.5/10)

Holy Potatoes! is a fun, casual management game, with a charming art style and funny references, for a time before quickly descending into tedium. Even fans of management games will find this game quickly gets repetitive so only buy it if you see it on sale or you really can't help yourself.

Review copy provided.

No drama, Just Reviews.

El K.

This isn't especially deep and you really can't walk into this game expecting anything too complicated. Some of the other reviews mentioned it gets repetitive and it does if you binge the game. Don't let that put you off though, this is a very well polished game and I found myself hooked for quite some time. Expect maybe 8-10 hours of gameplay.

I feel as though I have become long winded therefore moving to bullet points. Move ranty explanation below. Essentially, it is a casual game if you like Game Dev Tycoon, you will be fine with this game. Saw something about a save bug, seems they fixed it.

Pros:
+I really like the bribing element of the judging event.
+Artwork
+Music
+Story was amusing
+Overall good casual game, its not Anno, its not Sim City, who thought it was?

Cons:
-Pause Feature

-Research times are a bit long, I had usually long beat a level and was mostly sticking around to finish up research

-The random events don't seem particularly helpful/hurtful, option to turn off maybe? , reduce frequency.
-Needs easier way to see smith stats

-When in the workshop your smiths will leave their positions, to get coffee, they should leave a nameplate or the like behind to know where they were standing.

-At 14.99 USD, it is a little high, knocking that down to 9.99 would probably be better.

Honestly a little surprised at the reviews for this game. I see a lot of people complaining about waiting for things to be done etc, but, I honestly can't think of a game in which you don't wait for things to be done. The game does let you speed up time so you really aren't waiting for things to be done that long. Also, if you are just sending one smith out and not doing anything else in the meantime you aren't managing very well.

Another thing is saying the game doesn't have management elements. You choose your smiths, upgrade them, pick which jobs they have, where they stand as to increase their specific skills, who goes out and does what. Sounds like management to me.

Another review said that bids for selling items were randomly generated! That is just not true, they're based on the stats of the weapons compared to the desires of the buyer. Some heroes like bows and speed primary, accuracy secondary, they will give you more for that particular item than a hero you likes damage and swords. That one really baffled me when I read it.

I have played both Game Dev Tycoon and Recettear, and as far as I'm concerned this game is a product of those two. The game is not hard by any means in my opinion, it is a casual game. You play this game to waste some time, not for a challenge, I don't believe that is this game's goal. The music is nice and the artwork is great, it has puns and humor. You enjoy looking and listening and getting your potato to be the greatest potato smith there is.


Really just super confused who would look at this game and not see it as a silly casual game.

Potatoes making weapons for other potatoes. I don't why potatoes, but why not you know?

++Time management tycoon game but you can stay logged in and not log out for stuff to actually happen
+Easy to pick up and a thorough tutorial to guide you initially
+Humor for all ages, young, old, mature, immature, childish, adultish
+Fulfill missions by forging weapons for adventurers so they can level up and gain EXP
+Silly and not so important story line that helps the game progress along
+Lots of jokes related to RPG Adventure games, both praising and bashing it
+Explore, shop, sell weapons, and go on vacations! What a job!
+A rather small amount of replay value, but there's still some!

=It's not techinically an RPG... but there is some grinding involved
=Dialogue was a little glitchy, for to continue the dialogue you must click but sometimes it skips an entire piece of dialogue as it registers two clicks. I know I'm clicking once though, because I can one tap for days in CS:GO even though I am a Silver scrub
=Despite multiple save files (and an autosave slot) the grinding and slow start make it not worth it to start many games after your first, but maybe one or two to try different methods

-Overpriced (But definitely worth it on sale!)
-Slow paced and uneventful for the first couple hours, then stuff starts to ramp up but you need to persist through the tutorial


STEAM REVIEWS GROUP!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4BQSDGExl23rHcd9ML2mRw?

Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! is a game about running a weapons store/blacksmith in an RPG universe filled with...Potatoes

The world seems cute, loaded with potato puns along with simple yet good graphics, but with only a few things to do in it no amount of looking pretty and cute dialogue is going to redeem the fact that in its essence it's a waiting game.

That's right, there's no real simulation or management here(Thanks steam tags!), with you just sending your potatoes out to do things and then waiting for them to come back. Or alternatively, telling them to make a weapon and then waiting for them to finish. The large part of this game is waiting for things to be done so that you can tell them to do more things...And then you wait some more.
This may be fine and well for a timewaster game on an iphone, but it just does not cut it for an actual PC game. You sit and wait for your potatoes to be done and you are occasionally thrown a random event which is a reference to an older game with two options which can both be a success (Minor, barely noticable effect on a single potatosmith), or a bad event which will give you a slight bad effect on a single potatosmith. In the end, you can just skip most of them and you wouldn't lose out on anything. It relies purely on it's 'humour' of gaming references and potato puns to be interesting, which does not make for a good game.

There is simply no gameplay to be had. No real managing your store, or figuring out what to do best, just telling your spuds to go do stuff and then waiting for them to do it. I would say it is closer to an interactive screensaver with pretense of being a game than it is to actually being a game - Sad too, as I was hoping to find a good management game

With a price of 15 euro, I would say it is severely overpricing itself. If it were in an app store, for maybe 5 euro/dollar I could see it succeed, but at this price and on a PC it has no chance at all. If you are still curious about it, pick it up at a sale, but don't bother with it full price unless you are a very patient person, and you do not mind not having anything to do.

This is rather a mixed review, Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! has its charm with colorful graphics and animation along with a comical storyline and references to other big games/movies.

However, the game is terribly repetitive towards mid and late game, it could even be cut short to 50% of its original game length and you're still not missing out on anything. Spud Tales: Journey to Olympus DLC is a separate storyline with the same gameplay, so buying that would not improve on the original game either.

I only recommend the game if you're really into casual management game that doesn't take itself too serious.

The art and animation is top notch, the plot sequences are enjoyable and sometimes funny, and the music is good. I was impressed again and again by the level of effort put into the UI, from the shop to the world map to the weapon selling screen. Little extras, like the confetti that appears when a smith brings money home, make cycling through the game menus a joy.

This is good, because you'll be doing a lot of menu cycling. Where the presentation is vibrant, the gameplay is fairly one-dimensional. The game consists almost entirely of menus to start and end tasks like selling weapons, exploring for materials, or going on vacation. The only visibility into what your exploring/buying/selling smiths are actually doing is a timer filling up over a thumbnail. Even the shop floor, where you can move (very adorable) blacksmiths to different stations to boost weapon stats during forging, feels very cut and dry. This one non-menu activity is also fairly clunky: the lack of a button to pause time combined with a left click to move and select control scheme feels like running underwater as you scramble to move your smiths between stations.

Despite the overall excellence of the menus, tooltips, thumbnails and maps that are, essentially, the gameplay, there were a few oversights that made for more needless work in the game. For instance, a great deal of time in the game is spent switching between your forging stations and the prospective buyers to see what stats they prefer, and what you can craft to satisfy their needs. Because there is no way to see buyer information from the forging stations, you must go through three menus to look at them. Eventually I just wrote down their stats on paper so I could see them in the forge.

I hate to say this, because this game clearly represents a substantial amount of work, and I honestly will look for the next game the studio puts out. Holy Potatoes comes in a beautiful package, but the gameplay lacks substance. While a fast forward button does help to cut down the waiting that mostly fills the spaces between menu clicks, the game unfortunately loses its novelty fairly quickly. If the game were cheaper, it could have been a good buy for the three hours of fun I had with it. At this price, I can't recommend it.

If you're a very patient person who doesn't mind repetitive tasks (but really likes the art style of the game), then this might be something for you. But if I'm completely honest, under the beautiful exterior lies a very shallow interior. The game is fun for the couple of first galaxies, but then when you come to the realisation that the game is asking you to do the same thing in a new place it just... gets boring. It starts to feel like a chore, and you do it all just so you can see the ending.

Pros:

• Unique art style
  
• Cool weapon designs
  
• Funny script
  
• Cute soundtrack
  
• A simple but effective story
  
• Potato puns
  
• No bugs or crashes
  
• Lots of references and cameos
  
• Customizable smithy

Cons:

• Very repetitive.
  
• Events are inconsequential, they hardly affect the game.
  
• New weapons are just power creeps of earlier weapons...
  
• Not very interactive, you basically just pick which weapon to make, where your potatoes stand and who to sell the weapon to.
  
• Missable things between worlds (research, materials, leveling all heroes), you can't go back.
  
• Super tedious achievements - crafting 50 of each weapon doesn't happen instantly, really.

Overall I liked this game, mostly for the art style and humour. It's ok for a playthrough, but if you're a completionist then you're going to have a not-so-wonderful time. (If you'd like another weapon shop game, try Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS). It isn't that great, but I liked it a bit better.)

If you're really sold on the game, buy it! But you might get a bit disappointed.

Light strategy game. A bit boring and repetitive. Not particularly bad or offensive, I can imagine many people will love its tame humor, even though I couldn't get myself to finish it. But I'd rather recommend 'Recettear' over this pale combat-free copy of the Japanese indie classic.

Time management sim with higher than usual production values. It's cute but it's just too much of a pure timewaster for me without enough incentives to waste said time here instead of on another trivial pursuit.

I'll give it a tentative recommendation at the right price (I got it in a bundle with other goodies) and if you're a genre fan. Otherwise I'd suggest something else. Just goes to show that no matter how enticing the package if the gameplay core doesn't appeal to you it's all for naught.