Winkeltje: The Little Shop
Sassybot
Technical & Gameplay Designer
Winkeltje: The Little Shop
Platform:
PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5
Project Type:
Commercial Project
Engine:
Unity
Genre
Management Simulation
Team Size:
4
Duration:
29 months
Year:
2019-2022
State:
Released
Game Summary
In Winkeltje you play as a shopkeeper in the days of old, inheriting the old family shop along with your family's debt. It's up to you to pay off the debt and turn the shop into a booming business, by buying low, selling high and selling crafted items. Build and decorate to transform your shop into the shop of your dreams.
Awards
Project details
Summary
Winkeltje is a shopkeeper management game in development by Sassybot and is currently in early access on steam. Joining the project during my second internship in the fourth year of university, the game had been in development for around 8 months and there had been several Technical Design predecessors.
The project had a special branch on steam that any and all changes were immediately pushed to. This allowed us to get feedback on new features and changes, and roll out bug fixes to people as soon as possible. Under normal circumstances the main release branch would be updated with the changes on unstable every so many weeks.
As the game had been in early access with active players a specific gamefeel had been established with the players having gotten accustomed to this. Any developments therefor needed to build on this or gradually change it whenever an improvement was found.
After a successful internship I was brought onto the project officially when I was invited to join Sassybot as its Technical Gameplay Designer.
Responsibilities
Balancing items, events, objectives, placeables;
Expanding gameplay with established mechanics;
Providing feedback on concepts;
Prototyping gameplay features;
Content creation;
Content implementation;
Bug testing;
Bug fixing;
Tool creation;
Representing the end user and their wishes;
Finding ways to improving user experience;
Community Management;
Communicating issues/improvements from community to the other devs;
Supporting smooth rollouts of updates
Contributions
Event blocking tool;
Commission balancing tool;
Rebalances of items, decorations;
Commissionboard design;
End game designs;
Crafting mechanic update;
New storage furniture content;
Writing update posts;
Bug fixes;
Represented developers towards community;
Game feel through balance