okay it is fascinating though how all these "here's a wholesome game where you play as a small business owner" rely on like. an endless flood of customers just Existing, none of them having any characterization, none of them presenting any problems, just faceless guys
like, every single shop management game i've played EVER does this. i'm not sure this is a bad thing? i'm curious about it though. fascinating thing. is that just necessary?
Let's say you're the shop keeper in a historical Europeanesque village. Well, what kind of shop and village? Usually a workshop, or else temporary on market days with imported goods or the fruits of labor/farming/gathering. Is the village poor or rich or middling?
Maybe the player gets to choose or randomly roll the above types of setup. Ok so, customers are either neighbors in the village, or strangers from outside it. When a neighbor comes into the shop, the player is presented with a two step choice: first, a choice out of 3 traditional interactions the player character's relationship with this neighbor involves; second, a choice of how generous or stingy the player wants to be in approaching their obligation in that relationship. Then it goes into a conversation influenced by the apparent prosperity of the player's shop and the customer and the needs of each character. The important thing is, all these interactions will be remembered later, and important flags like "player manipulated the conversation with personal details" or "player was generous" or "player is usually stingy" will make a difference.
Strangers have a different choice, depending on if they have a traditional relationship to draw on (such as an agent of the local Lord who isn't well known to the village), or not (a travelling merchant or mendicant). There isn't necessarily an ongoing relationship with the stranger characters, but what the player chooses to do with them will have especially large effects on their reputation with their neighbors. And not the same as if the same were done with a local; a player character's normal generosity being swapped for driving a hard bargain with a wealthy traveling merchant might get mad respect for example, where doing so with neighbors might make trouble with them.
Endings could be based on the player character's legacy when they pass away. Did they become a rich miser? Did they ever marry, and is there a child to carry on their legacy? Did they scrape by barely having anything but sharing what they had? Etc. With some special endings if particularly difficult to achieve results at found and performed.
Honestly sounds like a cool af game design and I think it could be very cozy. A minimal version of it wouldn't even have to be huge, if it were condensed to something like 5-10 turns of major interactions, and for an MVP version eliminate all variables of which interactions and which shop, just make one combination as more of a kinetic story. I could see it at the scale of a simulator with procedural generation though, and that version fascinates me.
