[1.5] The End

• Permanent price reduction from $4.99 USD to $1.99 USD as there will be no further updates to the game.

• Made it so that the seasonal events will activate automatically as opposed to me uploading a new build manually. The Halloween Event will run from October 1st to October 31st, and the Christmas Event will run from December 1st to December 31st. These, as always, can be activated from the options menu using the cheatcode "spooky" and "christmas".

• I've updated the demo of the game to be more accurate to the state the game is in now. The demo was riddled with bugs that have long been fixed in the full version of the game. Those all have now been fixed and is in a much better state then it was before.

• Fixed a bug where if a coupon was placed off screen if would not allow you to continue, forcing you to restart the game or exit to the main menu.

• Fixed the audio levels on a handful of sound effects and music to make it all around a better experience.

• Fixed a bug where the resolution would change when you would start a new game.

I want to thank you all for the continued support for Shoppy Mart, I am continually surprised by how many people continue to purchase and play this little game I started working on almost 4 years ago now. I'd like to take this moment to take you through some of the development of the game, along with some features that never made it into the game, such as a big update I was working on, Shoppe Mart: Fantasy Edition. Shoppy Mart was the first game I ever made. On a whim I uploaded it to itch.io and to my surprise, people started downloading it, asking questions about it, and bringing recommendations to me about the game. Back then it looked like this: From itch.io I got requests to put the game on Steam Greenlight, so I put it on Steam Greenlight, then the game got voted through Steam Greenlight and now I had to make a real game!! It was scary, and new, and I definitely felt that I was under-qualified to be doing such a thing, but I did it, and although the review score right now is sitting at 63%, it still performed better then I could have ever imagined. I had a lot of doubts about making a game about being a grocery store clerk. I had decided to make a grocery store clerk simulator after I had worked at a grocery store for two years and thought that my coworkers and I were treated... not super well, and wanted to allow people to see what it is like on the other side of it. There are some people who understood what I was going for, and I am glad that Shoppy Mart could give them (to the best of my abilities at the time) the experience of being a grocery store clerk. There were a handful of ideas that I had started implementing but then never left it in the game. The original idea is that you would eventually be able to manage the whole store, but this was my first game, and I had no idea how to do the ideas I had for the game. Some of the ideas that I worked on that never made it into the final game were:

• Stocking items in the store.

• Manging the schedule for other employees once you got promoted to shift manager.

• Check out speed competitions

• Express Lane

• Talking to other employees in the break room.

• Managing your money to take care of your car, apartment, food, gas, ect.

• Going to the bar to drink/talk to other people.

• The back story of the dark history of the company that would be revealed throughout the game.

• Selling alcohol and having to check IDs.

• Checking your phone and using different apps while inbetween customers.

• I also started work on a character named Skele Bones who is a checker who has been working at Shoppy Mart for forever. I ended up abandoning it as I never figured out a good way to connect his story in the main game. I abandoned his solo game later on, but you can play a part of it on itch.io.

• Shoppe Mart: Fantasy Edition, was a huge update I was working on that would completely change the game. You were now a loyal merchant of The Shoppe Mart Kingdom, responsible for trading with other kingdoms, such as The Dairy Isle and The Frozen Isles in order to keep the kingdom running smoothly. It was ambitous and fun to work on, but in the end I didn't feel like it made enough sense to continue development on it. It was so different that it should almost be an entirely different game. There was going to be wizards, goblins, elves, ect. Maybe one day I'll be able to make that kind of game, and maybe it was wrong of me to cancel it, but that's just part of being a 'in my free time' game developer. I work a full time job and don't have the time to pursue every idea I have. Here are two gifs of what the Fantasy Update looked like, along with an early prototype of the trading.

• There was many more, but those are some of the more interesting ones.

Some of the stats from Shoppy Mart: Steam Edition:

• Shoppy Mart has been downloaded/purchased nearly 100,000 times in total.

• Shoppy Mart has been viewed on Youtube 7,000,000+ times total.

• 2.5% of all players on Steam have beaten the game.

  (and reached hell.)

• Buttface was the most popular choice for customer unlocks.

• It took 13 months for the secret file to be found and the symbols in the handbook to be decoded, which revealed some cheat codes in the game.

As for what is next, I am continuing to make games in my free time and am planning to make a sequel to SM using the experience and skills I have gained in the 4 years since I first started working on SM. I want the sequel to be much more of a 'fun' video game then SM was. I think it does a solid enough job of being a grocery store clerk simulator, but it definitely can be boring, much like the job can be in real life. This is what I was aiming for when I originally started making the game, but I took that idea a little too seriously and should have tried to make the game more engaging and rewarding as a player. I want SM2 to be everything I wanted SM to be, but couldn't be, because I lacked the experience, programming skills, project management skills, time management skills, and game development lessons that I have learned now. I want to thank you all for the lessons you've taught me, the patience you've shown, and the support you have given me on this journey as I continue to learn how to become a 'real' game developer. You can follow me and my future endeavors on Twitter and on itch.io. https://twitter.com/pezomi https://pezomi.itch.io/ Thank You. -Brady