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Winner of the IGMC 2014 Humble Bundle Choice award for the RPG category!

Have you ever wondered what it must be like being a Vendor? You know, those helpful people who just happen to be in the right spot at the right time, selling you those potions you so desperately needed? Did you ever consider that perhaps these people were not there by chance or destiny, but rather by their own free will? That they have a life? Are you tired of questions? Have some answers!



In this game, you are the hero vendor. Like always, you will stock up on tons and tons of items--but this time, you get to make a profit! Because who isn't tired of smacking an Ogre silly to get his purse of gold, only to hand it all over to the next vendor you meet to upgrade your gear. Well fear not, because all that fighting?



There will be no evil fighting done by you this time around. That's up to the heroes to do. Your job will be to sell them the necessary items to stay alive; buy their hard earned special loot from them when they're done smashing faces; and then sell it or trade it–-for a profit, of course! What you will be doing is visit pubs (strictly for work!); find the best prices on items; haggle and trade; examine the areas and enemies that the heroes will be fighting next, and making sure you sell them something that'll see them through the day. And finally get their hard earned gold into your pockets!



"They've probably seen mah bonnie coopon awreddy, ye nerd." - The Warrior
*sigh* "Do we have to do this?.."- The Witch
"Honored to make your acquaintance, good sir- ah, madam?" - The Cleric
"You never saw me, alright?" - The Thief



Something about a thousand pictures needed to spell a word. Click the "Images" link up in the main navigation.


Expect grand adventures of nut crushing and profit making! Capitalism-heyoooo!


Credits to yeppoh.stage-select.com for this glorious piece of art.

Latest Blog

The Vendor - The future

So you've helped the heroes as a Vendor, and you wonder: what's next? Soon, you'll be able to be the Heroe- I'm joking. I had to borrow that one, outcry312: too funny to pass up!


After winning the Humble Bundle Choice award in the IGMC2014 contest, I was contacted by Degica where they asked me if I was willing to go commercial with the game. As a one man "indie" (or maybe living room developer is more appropriate?), my first and foremost concern is retaining my creative freedoms and rights to my game. After emailing back and forth for a while, it turned out to be a really good offer that will benefit the further development of the game greatly. I will get help with things like testing and custom assets, as well as publishing; I will be able to publish the game to way more channels and devices than I could ever hope for alone, while I retain complete control over the game and all the rights to it.

Now before I go on, I'd like to address the fact that some of you will probably find "going commercial" to sound like "selling out". But the details are important, and it's also important to stress that making games is -- as many of you no doubt know intimately from personal experience -- very hard work. I need some help, and getting that help for free only gets you so far. The benefits of signing up with Degica for publishing and assistance are many, and by taking a load off my shoulders (meaning more time for actually developing the game) and enabling me to polish the game up to a higher standard altogether, it's a great deal.

It does however mean that a new and improved The Vendor will be a commercial game with a pricetag attached. However, I still remain 100% in charge, and the development work all falls on me as before. It remains my game entirely, and I'll make absolutely sure it's worthy of the money asked!

I want to also mention a few things I have planned to do with the game now that I'll expand on it. There will be a separate post with way more details soon, but for now I can share the following rough outlines:

  • Item stats should not be vague or hidden. In fact, I'd like to remove "stats" and focus on attributes instead: heavy, light, sharp, blunt, elemental, etc. The core gameplay of figuring out what works best while earning as much money as possible on selling it remains, but I want it to be more logical. But I want there to be room for experimentation; there should be an inherent risk/reward relationship where trying out things outside of the "safe zone" could potentially yield great reward.
  • Combat summary will be visualized when the heroes tell you how it went around the campfire. The reason isn't just that it'll be more fun to watch, but also that the hints as to what went right or wrong can be made clearer without spoon feeding it through extensive text dialogue. This was the original plan -- and there is actually some code for it already in place -- but it had to be cut due to time constraints.
  • A more interesting ingredient system. While it's fun to squash wall-nuts with your fists, I would like to find a better way to solve the dilemma of "if the player goes broke, how will they get back on their feet?".
  • Improved trading system.
  • A bestiary that automatically logs hints and tips you gather. This is one heavily requested feature which I'm very happy to implement.


Obviously I will also add more areas to explore, and more stuff overall, but I also have to be careful not to let the project spiral completely out of creative control now that there's not a super strict deadline. Rest assured that I've listened to every single piece of feedback I've gotten so far, and I'm taking it all into consideration when going forward.

And on that note I'd like to again thank everyone who played the game so far, and a double thank you to everyone who shared their feedback with me: it's been invaluable!

Thanks for reading, and see you next update~
  • Production
  • Galenmereth
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • RPG
  • 06/29/2014 12:46 AM
  • 12/28/2018 10:07 AM
  • 06/30/2014
  • 77039
  • 34
  • 905

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Well I tried your game just now..Played it for 1hour and 30 mins ;)
Its a very good game... Interesting gameplay with a cool twist.
It got me a little hooked. Good job ! Good luck in the contest.
My game Egbert is also in the contest.*Excited*
Thank you! Glad to hear it kept you entertained :D

I'll be sure to check out your game too!
Awesome:) thank you. Yea it was pretty good.I lost at the slime battle though,because
I tought I had everything they needed.I will try again tomorrow :)

I liked all the random stuff:) And how you must think tactical to earn money and make
the heros win their fights.Thumbs up.

Graphics 3/5 - Simple rtp graphics with some awesome sprites! Gj on the sprites.
Gameplay 4.5/5 - The gameplay was very entertaining and fun.You have a good system.
Music 3.5/5 - The music is cute and it fits pretty well with the concept.

Overall
After what I seen of the game so far I give it a 4/5 from me.A game worth playing!
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
This is commercial? Is there a full version you are releasing after the contest or something?
No, this is the full version. But the contest is a commercial endeavour in itself, and that's why I've labelled it as such :)
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
author=Galenmereth
No, this is the full version. But the contest is a commercial endeavour in itself, and that's why I've labelled it as such :)

Eh, for the purpose of this site, I think you'd be better off not including the label (not like anyone else had with their contest entries), but I don't know. You might want to ask some of our staff here about it.
I think you're right. Removed it, since it causes undue confusion~

Thanks for the heads up!
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
This looks like a bit of fun, I'll add it to my list of ones to get done before the 7th for the people's choice vote.

Given the file size you can also host it here on RMN if you so choose.
I think I'll let it remain on my s3 server. *watching those combined statistics*

And thank you so much for adding it to your list of games to play before the 7th. I hope you have fun with it :)
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Right I just started this, and I'm liking the humour already which is a definite plus. If it continues like this it's going to be a fun hour or so.

Ok finished it, liked it, reviewed it. I can see how someone could run through this in an hour, but I was aiming to be the best damn vendor there is, so I spent double that. Thanks, this was a fun addition and I really hope you add to it with more places to go, quests to aid and people to meet.

One small thing you may want to make a note about installing the additional fonts in the folder, if the player doesn't the name choice option is empty of characters. It's an easy fix, just put in a 'readme before play' notepad file.
Hi nhubi, thanks for the feedback! The problem with the font is really weird: I use a non-standard font which is in the Fonts folder, but no players as of yet has had that problem :o Ace /should/ fetch it from there even for name input. What OS are you on? I'll need to figure that out :)

I'm glad to hear you liked it. I wasn't sure if people would enjoy this style of gameplay, but seeing as a lot of people have responded positively towards it, I'll develop it further. There are things from alpha I want incorporated, mechanics I want polished and updated, and I want to expand with new content. I'll keep you all updated on that!
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
I'm Win7, and once I installed the font everything was fine. I normally pre install any I don't recognise, I've just been playing a bit more than normal at the moment with trying the contest entries so I missed it.

I did notice a couple of small glitches, in the tavern in your home town with the two guys dancing around the table, your character can walk right through them.

I seriously adored the humour, I've always been a fan of puns and clever word play so this game had me laughing at the little things...I mean wall-nuts, hysterical. Though in that the graphic in your summary that pops up in the game seems out of place to me, as it happens inside a building and the graphic is obviously meant to be in a forest setting. I think it would be better placed as a random 'you squished it' event in Green Hills.

I really like the idea of in-game achievements when you reach certain goals, and the opening of new frontiers and horizons. In you don't mind a suggestion, perhaps something could be added about buying and upgrading a home. After all mercantile ventures can be very profitable, and given the fact that your character's father is now retired, making a place for him with creature comforts and servants to wait on him in his later years could be a nice way of showing appreciation for all he's done for you.

Oh and I made a suggestion in the review but I may as well reiterate it here, can we please have the Almanac be an actual item, like a bestiary? I had to keep hand written notes to remember the items I needed to source, having it in game would be so much easier.
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I can't see your review yet (does it need to be approved perhaps?), but I'll respond to what you've written here :)

author=nhubi
I did notice a couple of small glitches, in the tavern in your home town with the two guys dancing around the table, your character can walk right through them.


I actually did that on purpose, but a few players have thought of it as a glitch. The idea was that I didn't want the player to stand in the way of their awesome dancing, heh. But I guess it does seem weird that they can "clip" through you. So I'll change it :D

author=nhubi
I really like the idea of in-game achievements when you reach certain goals, and the opening of new frontiers and horizons. In you don't mind a suggestion, perhaps something could be added about buying and upgrading a home. After all mercantile ventures can be very profitable, and given the fact that your character's father is now retired, making a place for him with creature comforts and servants to wait on him in his later years could be a nice way of showing appreciation for all he's done for you.


Not a bad idea. Especially since I'm considering adding more content to the game--like an "infinite" randomly generated amount of quests--and having an additional goal to work towards will make it much more fun to turn a profit. I'll definitely look at this idea and see what I can do with it :D

author=nhubi
Oh and I made a suggestion in the review but I may as well reiterate it here, can we please have the Almanac be an actual item, like a bestiary? I had to keep hand written notes to remember the items I needed to source, having it in game would be so much easier.


Absolutely. It was very hard to fit everything I wanted within the one month of development, and a lot didn't make it. While the challenge of remembering all these details can be ok for a short game, with more content, the challenge will have to shift from memorizing details to managing your inventory and money instead, and so a proper beastiary--that lists all the details you've uncovered from NPC's--is something I'm going to add :)


Again, thank you for playing and giving your feedback, really appreciate it!
Congrats for winning the Humble Bundle Choice for Non-RPG! You did really well and your hard work paid off!
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
I'm so happy for you, well done!
Grats man =) your game is really good ^^ got me pretty hooked.
Thank you everyone! I'm really happy about this; very awesome! :D

(they actually moved me to the RPG category today, and changed the comment slightly: it's even more positive now~)
author=Galenmereth
Thank you everyone! I'm really happy about this; very awesome! :D

(they actually moved me to the RPG category today, and changed the comment slightly: it's even more positive now~)


Thats awesome ;) grats again. Hope to see more of this gems from you =)
I just finished the final boss. It took me almost 2-hours of in-game time but I know it was more than that because I save scummed quite a bit and also started over at one point because of a major blunder. I'm drafting up a review with my full opinion but overall I would like to say great concept and congrats on your win in the contest!
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