Have you ever wondered what it must be like being a vendor? You know, those helpful people who just happen to be in the right spot at the right time, selling you those potions you so desperately needed? Did you ever consider that perhaps these people were not there by chance–or by destiny–but rather by their own free will? That they have a life? Are you tired of questions? Have some answers!
In this game, you are the hero vendor. Like always, you will stock up on tons and tons of items–but this time, you get to make a profit! Because who isn't tired of smacking an Ogre silly to get his purse of gold, only to hand all of it over to the next vendor you meet to upgrade your gear. Well fear not; because all that fighting?
There will be no evil fighting done by you this time around. That's up to the heroes to do. Your job will be to sell them the necessary items to stay alive, buy their hard earned special loot from them when they're done smashing faces, and then sell it or trade it–for a profit, of course! What you will be doing is visit pubs (strictly for work!); find the best prices on items; haggle and trade; examine the areas and enemies that the heroes will be fighting next, making sure you can sell them something that'll see them through the day. And get their hard earned gold into your pockets!
The Warrior
"They've probably seen mah bonnie coopon awreddy, ye nerd."
The Witch
*sigh* "Do we have to do this?.."
The Cleric
"Honored to make your acquaintance, good sir- ah, madam?
The Thief
"You never saw me, alright?"
After winning the Humble Bundle Choice RPG award in the IGMC2014 contest I was contacted by Degica, where they asked me if I was willing to go commercial with the game. As a one man "indie" (or maybe living room developer is more appropriate?), my first and foremost concern is retaining my creative freedoms and rights to my game. After emailing back and forth for a while, it turned out to be a really good offer that will benefit the further development of the game greatly. I will get help with things like testing and potential custom assets, as well as publishing; I will be able to publish the game to way more channels and devices than I could ever hope for alone, while I retain complete control over the game and all the rights to it.
Making games is very hard work, as most of you no doubt know intimately from personal experience. I need some help, and getting that help for free only gets me so far. The benefits of signing up with Degica for publishing and assistance are many, and by taking a load off my shoulders it means more time for actually developing the game, and it enables me to polish the game up to a higher standard altogether: it's a great deal. It does however mean that a new and improved The Vendor will be a commercial game with a price-tag attached. However, I still remain 100% in charge, and the development work all falls on me as before. It remains my game entirely, and I'll make absolutely sure it's worthy of the money asked!
My plan is to make a demo version of the new and improved game that can stand alone; it won't be the complete package, but there will be no restrictions like a time limit or anything like that. I want it to contain as much content as the current contest version does, but with all the new updated mechanics and polish in place. It might not be the best business decision, but I hope being fair like that means people that truly dig the game will be willing to pay for more of it. Those that feel content with what they get in the demo get a worthy experience completely for free, just like before.I also want to mention a few things I have planned to do with the game now that I'll expand on it. There will be a separate post with way more details soon, but for now I can share the following rough outlines:
Obviously I will also add more areas to explore, and more stuff overall, but I also have to be careful not to let the project spiral completely out of creative control now that there's not a super strict deadline. Rest assured that I've listened to every single piece of feedback I've gotten so far, and I'm taking it all into consideration when going forward.
And on that note I'd like to again thank everyone who played the game so far, and a double thank you to everyone who shared their feedback with me: it's been invaluable!
Thanks for reading, and see you next update~
This is a .app version of The Vendor for Mac OSX. It was made by wrapping the Windows version in a wine wrapper, so no extra software is required to run...
Just unzip to wherever you want it and play--no installation required. Save files will be placed in the game folder itself.