Counter: Dungeon Shop Keeper

Heroes come out of the hole with things they do not understand and rent due on Tuesday. You have a set of scales and no scruples.

Counter is a dungeon shop game about the part nobody else simulates: naming the number. Buy low from people who cannot wait. Sell high to people who cannot count. Shutters up to shutters down is two or three minutes.

The haggle, capped at three. They say a number first, and it is never their best one. Counter it, hold where you are, or walk. Three exchanges and they go. There is no fourth. That cap is the whole design: a haggle that ends before it gets boring.

Nothing ever tells you what a thing is worth. Not the shelf, not the ledger, not the sale afterwards. You get the scales, which separate heavy from ordinary and say nothing else. You get whatever the seller claims, and the seller is usually wrong, at length, with confidence.

Stock goes stale. What you take in today is what you can move on tomorrow. A shelf full of the wrong thing is a shelf you already paid for. Close up, and the ledger writes itself: what came in, what went out, who came back up the hole, and the rent.

What's in it

• Five or six customers a day, each selling or buying
• A three-exchange cap that nothing in the game raises
• Scales that tell you light from heavy and refuse to say more
• Four shop upgrades: another shelf, better scales, a sign, a lamp
• Twenty-one goals to work through, and three things nobody is told about
• English and Korean, both written rather than translated
• No energy bar, no timers between days. It saves where you left off.

Controls (PC)

• Mouse for everything. Drag the price dial, or use - and +.
• Esc: back

The itch.io version

• No ads. No in-app purchases. The full game, once.
• Four once-a-day boosts that cost a video on mobile are free buttons here: appraise one item, one more customer, send out for something rare, and an advance on tomorrow when the shop is stuck.
• A tall window (540x960) that fits a 1080p screen and can be resized.

Credits

Fonts: Rubik and Pretendard (SIL OFL). Made with Godot.