Light strategy game. A bit boring and repetitive. Not particularly bad or offensive, I can imagine many people will love its tame humor, even though I couldn't get myself to finish it. But I'd rather recommend 'Recettear' over this pale combat-free copy of the Japanese indie classic.

This game is extremely mediocre, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, I personally want more out of a game of this price. It's a perfectly fine way to kill a few hours, but it's nothing special, and I certainly don't think it's worth $17.

My main complaint is that the game tries to hard to be funny, but it just isn't. Its jokes, which are almost entirely references (some of which stopped being funny a long time ago) nearly always fall flat, and there's just so many of them. If the game had more going for it this wouldn't be such an issue, but it doesn't. There's nothing really wrong with the game mechanics (aside from a few issues I had with selling weapons in one of the areas), but I found the story really uninteresting.

On top of all that, I don't really understand why the game is about potato people at all. I get that it's trying to be unique and memorable, but the 'incredible potato world' thing really doesn't improve the game in any tangible way. That's kind of a problem.

I've heard HPAWS described as soulless, and honestly, that's probably the best way to describe the game as a whole. HPAWS tries so hard to be fun and quirky and cool, but it doesn't pull it off, and in the end it's just kind of tedious. I don't think there's much replayability, other than maybe playing the game over again to see how much quicker you can finish it the second time, and with an estimated 5 hours of gameplay it's so not worth it. 5/10, play Recettear instead.

Just a ton of fun. It's not a particularly deep game, and it's not particularly novel, but it's just exceptionally well put together. It's lighthearted, the artwork is great, and the sound design is impeccable. A remendously fun way to spend a couple hours.

Too repeditive with no gameplay diversity, played for 3 hours, got no gameplay diversity past the half hour mark, and then just repeated with no at all diversity. Worth about three dollars, then barely worth the time. It lokked so good too, and I love tychoon games. I would refer you to Game Dev Tycoon for a more diverse tycoon with more contet for 2/3 the price.

This is a very fun game.
If you like any kind management games,you will enjoy it very much Potato/10 <---means very good :D

Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! is a casual management game from Daylight Studios. Your Grandfather has sadly passed away and he has left you his 0.01% stake in his blacksmith business, you feel you have no choice but to carry on his work and with the help of Agent 46 you try to create the most successful blacksmithing business the world has ever seen! Manage the shop, research new weapons, train up and coming blacksmiths, craft weapons for the World's heroes and so much more, all with the repeated click of a button (you have to do a lot of clicking).

Before I get underway I'd briefly like to mention my first impressions of the game. For the first half an hour or so I really did not like this game at all, it was a tutorial section so nothing was really unlocked yet and it just felt so tedious, click here, click there, make money etc. Thankfully, once more stuff became unlocked, I began to enjoy the game more, to the point where I played it for 4 hours straight. Sadly the game receeds into tedium later on, but more on that later.

+Charming art style
+Good writing and loads of amusing references to other games, movies and music
+A huge number of weapons, of many different types, to research and craft
+Occasionally random events will occur (such as a potato is struggling to cut a sapling down. Help him?) which provide a somewhat interesting break from the main game though this do begin to get repetitive rather quickly
+Most things, from your name to the name's of your weapons, can be named which can be rather amusing if you're good at coming up with funny names
+Nice, relaxing music, which fits well with the game
+The game gives you objectives to complete which helps guide you through the game
+You can upgrade your shop with cosmetic items such as carpets, wallpapers, dog houses etc

+/-The game's UI makes it feel like a mobile game, despite the fact that it's not, probably due to the dev studio mainly working on mobile games. Personally, I don't really mind this but I know it may bother some people

-There's next to no gameplay depth, all it is is researching weapons, followed by sending someone to buy supplies, followed by telling your blacksmiths to craft the weapon and you have to do this again and again and again and again
-For a good few hours the game is pretty interesting, the objectives are still pretty small so they don't take long to complete hence the game flows quickly but once you get into the later stages of the game selling three weapons (the most you can do in one go) only pushes the objective up by around 3% which means you have to grind out the same weapons over and over again which gets incredibly boring (this is the very reason I stopped playing the game)
-Some of the dialogue between your character and Agent 46 is repeated several times which I thought was pretty lazy
-So. Much. Clicking. I've never gotten into any of the clicker games so having to click so much in this game was rather irritating
-No graphical options, no control options and only very basic audio options

Verdict:
Worth Purchasing on Sale (6.5/10)

Holy Potatoes! is a fun, casual management game, with a charming art style and funny references, for a time before quickly descending into tedium. Even fans of management games will find this game quickly gets repetitive so only buy it if you see it on sale or you really can't help yourself.

Review copy provided.

No drama, Just Reviews.

El K.

Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! is a game about running a weapons store/blacksmith in an RPG universe filled with...Potatoes

The world seems cute, loaded with potato puns along with simple yet good graphics, but with only a few things to do in it no amount of looking pretty and cute dialogue is going to redeem the fact that in its essence it's a waiting game.

That's right, there's no real simulation or management here(Thanks steam tags!), with you just sending your potatoes out to do things and then waiting for them to come back. Or alternatively, telling them to make a weapon and then waiting for them to finish. The large part of this game is waiting for things to be done so that you can tell them to do more things...And then you wait some more.
This may be fine and well for a timewaster game on an iphone, but it just does not cut it for an actual PC game. You sit and wait for your potatoes to be done and you are occasionally thrown a random event which is a reference to an older game with two options which can both be a success (Minor, barely noticable effect on a single potatosmith), or a bad event which will give you a slight bad effect on a single potatosmith. In the end, you can just skip most of them and you wouldn't lose out on anything. It relies purely on it's 'humour' of gaming references and potato puns to be interesting, which does not make for a good game.

There is simply no gameplay to be had. No real managing your store, or figuring out what to do best, just telling your spuds to go do stuff and then waiting for them to do it. I would say it is closer to an interactive screensaver with pretense of being a game than it is to actually being a game - Sad too, as I was hoping to find a good management game

With a price of 15 euro, I would say it is severely overpricing itself. If it were in an app store, for maybe 5 euro/dollar I could see it succeed, but at this price and on a PC it has no chance at all. If you are still curious about it, pick it up at a sale, but don't bother with it full price unless you are a very patient person, and you do not mind not having anything to do.

** Key was provided by developer for review purposes **


Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! is an amazingly fun simulation and management game where you craft weapons for heroes. The game is full of numerous references to games, movies, and literature. I will add a TL;DR at the end.


You are the grandson of the great blacksmith Batata and you are informed by Agent 46 that he has passed away. Agent 46 informs you that you now own 0.01% of the shop while he own 99.99% of the shop. You start off with 3 different smiths to help you out. Each smith you can hire is essentially a parody of one character or another. Hulk Hogan becomes Bulk Bogan and so on. Throughout the game you craft an enormous amount of different weapons for heroes. There are legendary heroes and smiths who most people will recognize. There are 4 main stats that your weapons will use which include Magic, Speed, Accuracy, and Attack. The smiths have expansions into classes which improve their stats at improving certain aspects of a weapon. There are different regions to sell in and different heroes who will buy your weapons. The storyline is enjoyable and there are random events where you have to make a choice which will reward you or punish you. You can send your smiths to sell, shop, explore, train, and vacation. This is a game that will slowly make you want to play more and more with its interesting features.


The graphics in the game are polished and smooth (you know for a potato). Each character resembles a potato while also having different unique features. The character design is uniquely potato-like and the little customization options are nice. The music adds to the enjoyment and relaxation in this game. The character sounds are cute to say the least.


Pros

+ Dozens references to movies, literature, and games
+ Dozens of weapons to forge
+ Class Tree
+ Simple yet enjoyable storyline
+ Batato (Batman is a potato)
+ Mood system and dog helping mood
+ Artwork
+ Legendary Heroes and Smiths
+ Can spend hours playing this game

Cons

- Can get repetitive
- Bit slow at first
- Not that much customization
- Can only send 3 smiths at once to one location at a time


These are my personal suggestions for the game. My suggestions do not need to be taken seriously as they are my personal opinion for hopefully adding to the game to make it more enjoyable.

- When doing a request with a certain prefix have some way of checking the request while selecting the prefix to make sure you get it right
- More customization for the shop


I am happy to have been able to play this game. The amount of references is insane and the characters are potatoes. I have played this game quite a bit and am happy to say I regret nothing. The game is highly enjoyable but also has a good design and story. I love all of the little things and parodies I saw in characters, items, contracts, and choices.


Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! This game is full of references to gaming, literature, and movies. The story is solid and the gameplay is enjoyable. You start off with a simple shop with 3 smiths and soon you will have a shop with up to 10 smiths. There is a class tree for your smiths and 4 different stats which help your weapon like Magic, Attack, Speed, and Accuracy. While the shop customization is limited and the gameplay can become tedious at times the game is highly relaxing and has many fun features to create an enjoyable experience.

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The art and animation is top notch, the plot sequences are enjoyable and sometimes funny, and the music is good. I was impressed again and again by the level of effort put into the UI, from the shop to the world map to the weapon selling screen. Little extras, like the confetti that appears when a smith brings money home, make cycling through the game menus a joy.

This is good, because you'll be doing a lot of menu cycling. Where the presentation is vibrant, the gameplay is fairly one-dimensional. The game consists almost entirely of menus to start and end tasks like selling weapons, exploring for materials, or going on vacation. The only visibility into what your exploring/buying/selling smiths are actually doing is a timer filling up over a thumbnail. Even the shop floor, where you can move (very adorable) blacksmiths to different stations to boost weapon stats during forging, feels very cut and dry. This one non-menu activity is also fairly clunky: the lack of a button to pause time combined with a left click to move and select control scheme feels like running underwater as you scramble to move your smiths between stations.

Despite the overall excellence of the menus, tooltips, thumbnails and maps that are, essentially, the gameplay, there were a few oversights that made for more needless work in the game. For instance, a great deal of time in the game is spent switching between your forging stations and the prospective buyers to see what stats they prefer, and what you can craft to satisfy their needs. Because there is no way to see buyer information from the forging stations, you must go through three menus to look at them. Eventually I just wrote down their stats on paper so I could see them in the forge.

I hate to say this, because this game clearly represents a substantial amount of work, and I honestly will look for the next game the studio puts out. Holy Potatoes comes in a beautiful package, but the gameplay lacks substance. While a fast forward button does help to cut down the waiting that mostly fills the spaces between menu clicks, the game unfortunately loses its novelty fairly quickly. If the game were cheaper, it could have been a good buy for the three hours of fun I had with it. At this price, I can't recommend it.

I feel as though I have become long winded therefore moving to bullet points. Move ranty explanation below. Essentially, it is a casual game if you like Game Dev Tycoon, you will be fine with this game. Saw something about a save bug, seems they fixed it.

Pros:
+I really like the bribing element of the judging event.
+Artwork
+Music
+Story was amusing
+Overall good casual game, its not Anno, its not Sim City, who thought it was?

Cons:
-Pause Feature

-Research times are a bit long, I had usually long beat a level and was mostly sticking around to finish up research

-The random events don't seem particularly helpful/hurtful, option to turn off maybe? , reduce frequency.
-Needs easier way to see smith stats

-When in the workshop your smiths will leave their positions, to get coffee, they should leave a nameplate or the like behind to know where they were standing.

-At 14.99 USD, it is a little high, knocking that down to 9.99 would probably be better.

Honestly a little surprised at the reviews for this game. I see a lot of people complaining about waiting for things to be done etc, but, I honestly can't think of a game in which you don't wait for things to be done. The game does let you speed up time so you really aren't waiting for things to be done that long. Also, if you are just sending one smith out and not doing anything else in the meantime you aren't managing very well.

Another thing is saying the game doesn't have management elements. You choose your smiths, upgrade them, pick which jobs they have, where they stand as to increase their specific skills, who goes out and does what. Sounds like management to me.

Another review said that bids for selling items were randomly generated! That is just not true, they're based on the stats of the weapons compared to the desires of the buyer. Some heroes like bows and speed primary, accuracy secondary, they will give you more for that particular item than a hero you likes damage and swords. That one really baffled me when I read it.

I have played both Game Dev Tycoon and Recettear, and as far as I'm concerned this game is a product of those two. The game is not hard by any means in my opinion, it is a casual game. You play this game to waste some time, not for a challenge, I don't believe that is this game's goal. The music is nice and the artwork is great, it has puns and humor. You enjoy looking and listening and getting your potato to be the greatest potato smith there is.


Really just super confused who would look at this game and not see it as a silly casual game.