JRPG merchant mayhem can be yours in Recettear

3:23 PM on 07.27.2010   |   Josh Tolentino

Vendor trash: it's the worthless garbage that comes part-and-parcel with any RPG worth its salt, and serves largely as a source of money for heroes everywhere. What's to be done with it? Obviously, one must offload it onto the nearest item shop. Poor chumps, they'll buy anything!

Well, how would you like to be on the receiving end of that kind of economic abuse? The indie JRPG Recettear lets you do just that. Developed by Japanese doujin group EasyGameStation, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, is a game about paying the bills, one way or another. Of course, being an item shop, one's main way of paying the bills would be selling crap to passing adventurers while avoiding bankruptcy.

And it's not just the cycle of buy low, sell high, either. Shopkeeper Recette and debt-collection fairy Tear can hire their own adventurers to quest for of shelf stock in a Zelda-esque mini dungeon-crawler.

I'm quite glad that localization startup Carpe Fulgur has chose to bring this little gem stateside, because it's a game that finally completes the RPG economic cycle. On the supply end you've got farming sims like Rune Factory and crafting RPGs like the Atelier series, and on the demand end you've got pretty much every other form of RPG. This little shop sim sits right in the middle...in retail.

Check out the trailer below, download the demo here, and DO WANT it into great success!