March 8, 2010
In Mystic Emporium you play as Lily who has always dreamed of owning her own magic shop. She’s finally saved up enough to purchase the shop and now it’s your time to help her make it a success.
You’ll be serving various customers and providing them with various potions and artifacts. The game’s 24 levels follow a definite progression. Along the way you’ll be serving more customer’s simultaneously, brewing potions with multiple ingredients, and growing magic Pocus berries. Each level has a par sales amount and then an Expert level amount that you can try and reach. Reaching Expert will often mean a lot of split second timing and juggling of different tasks to maximize your ability to get things done.
The game’s tutorial is very nice and shows you exactly how to brew potions and retrieve artifacts, take customer orders, and accept payment. The game’s interface is very easy to use. You just need to tap on the appropriate locations or items and Lily will do the requisite action. If you tap on multiple things, she will do them in the order you tap. As each customer arrives you’ll see that they have a little status bar next to them that shows how impatient they are and some customers are definitely more impatient and cheaper tippers…this is why you need that harp. Other customers regularly ask for multiple items at once.
Once you start playing, you will get an idea of just how long different actions take so you will be able to decide which actions should be prioritized. Of course, the faster you get a customer their wanted item or items, the bigger your tip will be…so be prepared to work fast. If you want that Expert level, Lily should never be standing still.
You’ll be able to buy various upgrades for Lily and her shop with the money you’ve earned. These include shoes to let her run faster, better cauldrons for faster potion brewing, storage spaces to hold extra berries or potions ready for sale, and a harp to soothe impatient customers.
There are also mini games you’ll play. You can earn different charms that will have an overall game effect. You’ll really want to try and win these mini games because the charms can definitely be helpful. The two I’ve encountered so far give a 25% chance for a customer to leave a double tip and having Pocus berries grow faster.
The difficulty level of this game can be quite challenging and in later levels you may be hard pressed to meet the par score versus even trying for the Expert level score. One thing that is nice is that you can go back and retry earlier levels to see if you can earn more money or get that Expert level. Also, there are various trophies to earn for various achievements like not losing any customers or having to flush any potions.
I really like the graphics and sounds for the game. There are a lot of visual and auditory cues in the game to help you out and generally add to the Mystic Emporium “atmosphere”. All of the customers have their own animations as well and will definitely look angry as their patience levels drop.
If you like the time management genre of games, or are looking to try one out. I definitely recommend Mystic Emporium. It’s easy to play, but quite challenging to master. You can have multiple profiles so if you have to share with someone else, they don’t have to affect your progress. The graphics and overall package are really fun, and I like that you can play minigames and earn trophies.
Definitely recommended.
Mystic Emporium on the App Store.
Rohith Bhat, CEO of the indie studio 99Games based in India with 15 games, and Filippo De Rose sat down earlier today with me at Casual Connect to have a quick chat. For about 30 solid minutes, we discussed the mobile industry, freemium vs. paid games, and tips for indie developers. Overall it was a pretty good conversation and some very good points were brought up about the mobile industry. Anyhow, be sure to check out the interview below via our Soundcloud channel.
Ahh, nothing like the good ol’ Black Friday sales. Joining in on the madness, 99Games has put 18 of their games (12 of them iPhone and 6 iPad) on sale for only a buck a piece (excluding Wordulous).
