After our Persona 3 Portable hat contest reached its conclusion and we got in touch with the contest winners, we were a little surprised to learn that one of them was more than simply a Siliconera fan.
SpaceDrake — or rather, Andrew Dice — is the founder and project director at Carpe Fulgur, a new independent doujin game translation house. The company’s first project is Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, an RPG for the PC, originally released by doujin group EasyGameStation.
While Recettear sports some pretty significant action elements, the game also features an equally large focus on running and managing an item shop. Here’s how Andrew described it to us:
“The player character, Recette Lemongrass, is in charge of running an item shop. You must decide how to get stock, how much to sell things for, and how to best go about getting enough money together to pay off the bank, who is breathing down your neck for repayments on a bad loan your father took out! It’s really quite unlike anything else available — perhaps the only comparable thing is the Atelier series, but this focuses on running the shop, not on making items.”
Carpe Fulgur’s site for Recettear is up now, and includes a demo version of the game for you to try. You can also check out the screenshots below and watch the trailer embedded above to get a feel for the game’s design and aesthetic.
