Ron Swanson once said, “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” Merchants of Rosewall wants to be a cozy store simulator. It wants to be a cozy small town with a dark mystery to unravel game. It tries to be both of those things and does neither of them well. It half-asses two things instead of whole-assing one thing. Ron was right. He always is.
Merchants of Rosewall
Developer: Big Blue Sky Games
Price: $24.99
Platform: PC (reviewed)
MonsterVine was supplied with Steam code for review
Merchants of Rosewall brings your character–mine was Cletus, a slutty pink-haired elf–to the city of Rosewall, sponsored by the Estoq Trading Company. The good news is they’re sponsoring you with shop space and a stipend. The trick is they own the land and shop; they want to see progress and growth; they periodically stop in to inspect the place; and, if you are a certain kind of internet poster, capitalism.
The shop management part of the game follows a simple loop: Figure out what you want to make, venture out to the market to buy raw materials, set your workers to making it, stock your limited shelf space and display cases with goods, and hopefully people show up and buy it, then, profit. You can scowl and mutter “This is capitalism’s fault” if you like, but this is entirely optional.
There are six workspaces in your shop covering cooking, woodworking, stonecarving, smithing, art, and tailoring. The local guild notifies you when a craftsperson/creature–yes, this is a cozy city with fantasy creatures–is available and you hire them and then they hang out and wait for you to tell them what to do. As you earn money and Renown and level up the shop, you open up more recipes for them.
The obvious constraints are: there’s only so much shelf space; there’s only so much money for raw materials; they can only make one type of thing at a time, usually. Ingredient availability and costs can vary. Customer tastes vary. And that’s where things begin to get less than ideal.
Merchants of Rosewall sort of wants to be a cozy shop game, but doesn’t have quality of life features or deep mechanics that would come with a cozy shop game. For example, it is fair enough that things require planning. Making a delicious soup requires making the broth first, which costs some time. Fair enough. It can also put you behind the curve for hitting your Renown goal. Okay, but you can make more money from soup than broth. Right? Well…
Maybe?
A lot of the “why” in what people purchase is opaque. People did seem to steadily buy both. On the one level, fair enough. I myself do have some vegetable stock in my cabinet in real life. But as a game mechanic, it’s frequently hard to tell what people are going to buy and why. Sometimes the feedback on a single item will be both “Customers were satisfied” and “Customers were dissatisfied”…which…
Look, I have worked everything from frontline retail to community management to marketing and nobody knows what they actually want. This is 100% accurate in real world terms. But it’s not a lot of fun to deal with. As a video game mechanic, you’re left kind of dicking around trying to figure out what sells, why, and what provides the greatest return. This is CAPITALISM’S FAULT!
There’s also not a lot of room for experimentation as far as I could tell. I get the recipe and skill-based gating from a game mechanics perspective, but on the other hand, you’re telling me if I buy a bunch of rice and meat and vegetables, my cook that makes a ton of noodle-based stir fries has no idea what to do when it’s rice? What do I need to do? Hire a shrimp to fry this rice? Is one available?
Part of the fun of shop sims, to me, is finding a niche and cultivating a customer base and figuring out how to run, like, a shop or store. Specialization also doesn’t seem to matter much that I could tell. Cletus’ Quickstop sold everything from beef stew to noodles to linen pants to stone tables to art supplies, so it’s not so much about the satisfaction of running a coffee shop or a blacksmith shop, it’s more about just throwing everything on the shelf and seeing what sells, gets the most renown, and isn’t too much of a pain in the ass to deal with.
The “pain in the ass” factor is real since >Merchants of Rosewall lacks the quality of life features I’d expect from a shop sim. You really do have to go out to the marketplace every day and buy supplies unless you’ve stocked up or bought one of a handful of bundles from a merchant. There’s no automating a regular order or even a “sure, the cook can buy potatoes, I don’t care.”
There’s also no worker automation that I could find, like “Just make pants until I tell you to stop.” For multi-step items, like a stew involving making broth and noodles, this means you have to tell the cook to get in the kitchen, then tell them to make the broth, then tell them to get in the kitchen the next day, then tell them to make the noodles, then tell them to get in the kitchen the next day, then finally make the damn stew.
One thing I noticed is that only 4.2% of players have the achievement for getting all the workshop rooms up and running. It took me less than 3 hours and that’s with lots of dicking around. I do think it testifies to the problem with a game like this: if it’s going to be a shop game, the shop gameplay has to be compelling enough to carry it. And it isn’t.
That would be fine if the mystery part was compelling. It really wants you to explore the cozy small town’s dark secrets. To borrow from “Hangman” Adam Page: NEWSFLASH, DUMBASS! Every cozy small town has a terrible secret!
Rosewall has something called “motes” in its water supply. They’re little energy blobs that store memories and let people experience those memories…but the memories your character starts finding aren’t the approved ones and don’t fit the narrative. Cue the X-Files theme. Ever hear of the Furry Alien, Scully?
The “Exploring the mystery” part would be fine if it hooked into the rest of the game. The mediocre shop-running and having to go to the market would be okay if I was actually forming relationships with people, having conversations, and slowly cracking the case, like running the shop was actually just cover…but most of the time, the “mystery” portion was an Exposition Character barging into my shop or a Plot Event-type market popping up on my map…
And usually my feeling was “why is this asshole bugging me when Restaurant Week is coming up?” I’m trying to keep my shop up and running, there’s a deadline, and I’m supposed to go off and play Scooby Gang with the town’s resident Old Kook? I’m also not revealing plot details but it felt like one of those “tragedies with cute fantasy/animal people designed to make those people who talk about crying all the time start crying.”
Part of it is the writers’ love their twee characters and I bounce right off that level of twee. To make up some names and demonstrate:
Game: heyyyy look, it’s Melvin with his wacky antics and silly voice! You love him!
Me: who
Game: haha that’s our Melvin! And look, it’s Trixie with her wacky hair! She had glasses and is kind of cranky!
Me: uh okay
Game: and it’s your old pal, the crazy old man with lots of theories! Hahaha! You love hanging out with him!
Me: I have no idea who any of these people are.
From Shopkeeping to Mystery-Solving, Merchants of Rosewall Lacks Focus
In trying to serve two masters–cozy shop game! Small town with a dark secret!–Merchants of Rosewall serves neither. It doesn’t have the detailed shop gameplay or crunchy numbers type features I’d want from a shop Sim, and it doesn’t have the compelling mystery or story telling or character interaction I’d want from a story game. On the other hand, Cletus’ Quickstop has Linen Pants in stock, come on in and try some on!
The Final Word
Merchants of Rosewall is an ambitious but unfocused game that spreads itself too thin. While the idea of blending a cozy shop sim with a deep mystery is appealing, neither aspect is fleshed out enough to stand on its own. The result is a game that feels more tedious than rewarding, making it hard to recommend outside of players willing to tolerate its rough edges.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
