Napoleon is said to have called England a nation of shopkeepers, presumably in contrast to warrior nations. But while there are a lot of games in which you can play a warrior, there are a lot less games in which you can keep a shop. Recettear comes to ming. Of course some MMORPGs like Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies enabled you to open a shop, but it is far more frequent that you're playing the hero instead of the shopkeeper. Recently the Apple app store featured Shop Heroes, so I went and tried it out. It turns out that keeping shop is more fun than you might think.

The basic gameplay of Shop Heroes is that you have a shop with workstations and resource bins. The resource bins create basic resources over time, and with the right workers hired and the right workstation you can transform those resources into weapon, armor, and other typical fantasy game equipment. Heroes come to your shop and buy things. Sometimes they ask for the stuff you already have in your inventory, sometimes they want something you need to craft first. There is also a system of "hearts", which you can spend to persuade your customers to pay more for an item, or to buy something else, and which goes up if you sell them what they want.

Curiously the heroes never equip the gear you sell them. Instead you can equip them with gear and send them out adventuring. They will earn xp and levels from that, and bring back rare resources for crafting. Crafting has a huge "tech tree", where crafting basic items often enough unlocks blueprints for higher level items. So over time everything levels up: The heroes, their gear, the items you can craft, the workers, even the workstations and other furniture.

In addition there is a city shared by 4+ players in an absolutely brilliant system: The buildings in the city level up in function of what the players invested in them. But your investments remain yours: If you quit a city or get kicked out by the major, you take your investment with you and contribute it to the next city you join. The sum of the investment of all players determines the level of buildings, and that unlocks heroes, workers, new resources, and gives various bonuses.

Shop Heroes runs on iOS, Android, and Facebook. You can link the iOS and Android versions to Facebook and run your same shop on different platforms if you want. The game is free, but of course you can spend real money on buying gems, and gems can speed up a lot of things, or get you additional slots for workers, crafting, or quests. In general I found the monetization scheme unobtrusive, except for one case: When you send out heroes on quests, there is a chance that a piece of their gear will break, and then the game is very pushy about offering you to repair that item for gems. But you can ignore that, let the gear break, and craft a new piece. Quests also can give you chests, and it is rarely that you find a key for those chests, so you might be tempted to unlock the chests for gems. I did buy the starter package for $5 which came with various additional slots, and found that to be good value for money. I wouldn't go overboard with buying gems and using them for everything, it doesn't really make the game more fun.

Overall I like Shop Heroes as a resource and time management game. You constantly need to make decisions, like whether you craft just what your customers demand, or whether you produce a lot of one specific item to unlock better versions. As crafting or quests frequently take minutes to finish once you have reached a certain level, it isn't a game which takes your full attention for hours; but it is quite fun if you just play it occasionally, or in parallel to watching TV. Recommended!