Thrifty Business
Rating: 3/5 - An enjoyable time
Difficulty: 1/5 - No skill needed
Replayability: 2/5 - Linear story followed by a repeatable loop
Commitment: 1/5 - Easy to complete
Play Time: 14.2hrs | Achievements: 37/37 | Story: Completed | Platform: Steam
Available on: Steam (Win, Mac)
Website: https://spellgardengames.com/
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Thrifty Business welcomes you with a delightfully vibrant colour palette, as to be expected of Spell Garden Games, and the charm of this game captures you immediately.
The organising is incredibly satisfying, being able to fit a ridiculous amount of items into a tiny shop feels so intrinsic to the charity/thrift shop experience, and the tag system is enjoyable to learn and experiment with. Once you start getting more and more items, you can truly customise how you want you shop to be experienced. I personally stuck very traditional with items being separated by clothing, electronics, toys and decoration, however there is no reason why you couldn’t treat the game like a good club and separate the rooms by vibe. The only downside to the organisation system is that you are really limited by space, and though that is a fun challenge for the most part, it can be frustrating to place the shelving. If you have a layout that has two shelves in front of each other, you will have to move a shelf every time to get to whichever one is behind it, and later in the game, it is unlikely you will have the space to easily do it. Unfortunately, it does take away from the relaxing experience slightly, and it really limits the customisation you can have with the layout of your shop. I would love it if you could double click a shelf to make any furniture in front of it partially transparent, or even if the transparency was triggered by hovering an item over a shelf for long enough.
Alongside the organising, another main part of the game is the stories of the regulars that you follow along with. These stories are delightfully diverse and grounded in real world experiences, and you can tell that a lot of love was put into them. They would come to you with stories, but I also enjoyed seeing them visit your shop just to come and buy some items, it helped them feel more real, and not just a story tool to add interest. Regulars would also interact with each other too, making it very enjoyable to learn of existing or budding relationships between them, either outside of the shop or through the event system. Though, as I reached the end game, I was slightly disappointed with the open-endedness of the stories, not because I felt like the stories needed more, but because I didn’t even realise I had finished all of the storylines until I almost completed the achievements. I got to a point in the game where I had decided to 100% it, and I felt deflated to see there was nothing more with the characters. Not all stories need to have tidy endings, but I do think it would’ve been a nice touch if all of the regulars got together to throw the shop-keep a thank you event, bringing together all of their stories and giving you a sense of accomplishment. Realistically, this is huge props to the developers for making the characters so compelling that I just wanted more.
One thing that is deeply intrinsic to this game is the queerness of it all. You can tell that the dev team has queer people as, yes, there’s a queer dating night and a queer tag for items, but the small details are what really solidify it for me. Queer stories, items within the queer tag that only make sense for a queer person to understand, shop visitors of all walks of life. It is truly delightful to see inclusion done so well without feeling forced, instead, it feels real.
Speaking on immersion: the sound design is immaculate. The music is enjoyable to listen to as standard, but start hosting events and notice how it changes depending on which event is being held that day, it is a wonderful touch that I didn’t know I wanted until I had it. The little noises when you or the shoppers interact with items, the sounds for opening and closing the shop, it’s all very well done without being overwhelming.
If you stream on Twitch, you’ll be pleased to know that, just like Spell Garden Game’s previous release: Sticky Business, this game also has Twitch integration. Let your viewers visit your shop, donate specifically tagged items, or even trash your shop (don’t worry, picking it up benefits you and I never experienced it negatively impacting gameplay). What my community noticed, is that if you visit different streams that are playing this game, you get the same character appearance, so it feels like you are the same person visiting a load of different shops. It’s a really nice touch that I personally appreciated. The integration is optional and also very customisable and I think it is a wonderful addition to this game.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game, though there were a few aspects that stopped me rating this highly. The game loop, though enjoyable, gets repetitive rather quickly, and without Twitch chat to cause chaos, each day felt very similar, especially after completing the stories for the regulars and figuring your organisation system out. I also felt like the game was begging to be played one handed, with either a click-and-drag or scrolling when the mouse is at the edge of the screen. The UI also got a little overwhelming at times, with it taking up a majority of the screen when everything was open. Even when taking this into consideration, I still think this is a wonderful game that is worth playing if you enjoy organisation, character stories, and a relaxing bit of gameplay.
