Merek's Market

by Aethyna Sep 16, 2021 | 1 Votes | 26 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

Co-op , Time Management , Shop Design

Platforms:

Publishers:

Big Village Games Merek’s Market is a time management-based shop simulation game that puts you into the shoes of a shopkeeper in a time and place where adventurers are aplenty. Craft and sell a huge variety of useful items, serve your customers as quickly as possible, and try to upsell your items whenever you can! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Merek’s Market is a whimsical shop simulation game with time management elements, putting you into the running shoes of a shopkeeper in a medieval fantasy period where adventurers, peasants, and nobles are aplenty. Craft and sell a huge variety of useful items, be it armor, weapons, potions or even… pottery, serve your customers as quickly as you can, and try to upsell your items whenever you can!

Plotline

The medieval fantasy world Merek lives in is a pretty colorful one and you’ll get to experience all of it from the perspective of a somewhat talented shopkeeper. As you play, you’ll get to interact with a host of funny characters, each of them with their own stories to tell, whether it is the hapless romantic or the egomaniacal wizard.

Merek also has two close friends, one of which is Tess who goes out into the world to find new recipes and bring them to Merek. The other is one of his regulars, a man named Len. He tries to be helpful to Merek but he often falls short of the expected ideal results… if not, fails entirely, turning a small problem into a much bigger one.

Gameplay

If you’re familiar with time management games, getting the hang of Merek’s Market should be fairly easy for you. You just need to control Merek around the shop, grabbing materials as you go and crafting them into the items your customers want. You’ll then deliver the items to your customers and then they will head over to the counter to pay you the money they owe you. There’s even a side table where you can “store” items you’ve crafted in advance.

Crafting here is very straightforward too. After referring to the giant book for the recipe, you can then add the materials to the work table before pressing the key to start crafting. Some items are even easier since you don’t have to manually craft the items yourself – just throw the materials into the furnace and let it burn!

Similar to the popular co-op game, Overcooked 2, you can even toss things around to speed up certain stuff too, such as throwing materials into the furnace as opposed to dropping them in one by one. But of course, some things can’t be thrown or they will break, such as the glass cup… or anything made from glass really.

However, the game does have some twists to spice things up a little. For instance, instead of directly collecting cash from your customers and earning tips based only on how fast you serve them their items, the game has a mini typing game for you to play where you’ll be asked to type the words displayed, like “sale” or “deal”, as quickly as you can to get the most tips. Any incorrect letter typed will cost you a little bit in tips.

From time to time, you may come across customers who are there either just to talk or to haggle. After choosing the correct item to sell to them based on the stuff they tell you in the dialogue, you’ll then need to choose how much to charge them.

If your starting price is too high, the customer may be upset and try to underpay you for the item so it’s important to pick up cues as to how much a customer is willing to pay for the item they need. So far, I’ve always managed to sell every item at, at least, slightly above the item value, so I reckon it’s not too difficult to do so.

Each level in Merek’s Market comes with three rating levels, and if you do well, you can get the highest rating – the gold. There’s even a leaderboard where you can compare your best score with other players and your friends. As you play, the levels get increasingly more difficult and the layout of the shop changes. There are also fun mini-games in between the typical time management levels.

Community

Merek’s Market supports up to 4 players in local co-op as well as Steam’s Remote Play Together, which I reckon will enhance the gameplay by a notch or two at least. The game is already a pretty solid single-player shop simulation game, after all.

Graphics/ Sound

The graphics here reminds me a lot of Wallace and Gromit for some reason. It’s probably because of the forced, teeth-revealing smile that the characters often use or because the game’s as silly, at times, as the latter. Unfortunately, I’m not too much of a fan of one of the soundtracks though. It sounds like the trumpet was added to turn the music a bit jazzy, but honestly,it just disrupts the quirky music in my opinion.

Conclusion

If you’re a fan of time management games, Merek’s Market offers the kind of gameplay you seek with a couple of nice twists, slathered with enough tongue-in-cheek humor to make you bark out a laugh once or twice on every level. Although I’ve not tried the game’s co-op, its single-player mode is already very entertaining to play, and challenging too, if you’re aiming for that shiny gold rating. Highly recommended!

New Game Added: Merek's Market

by Aethyna Sep 16, 2021

Merek’s Market is a time management-based shop simulation game that puts you into the shoes of a shopkeeper in a time and place where adventurers are aplenty. Craft and sell a huge variety of useful items, serve your customers as quickly as possible, and try to upsell your items whenever you can!