[Portasaurus]

Just pasting some notes I've written so far with additional possible ideas for gameplay.


GrocerQuest

You start as the stock boy. Your main job is to provide goods to your boss, the Greengrocer, who sells food and other commodities in Borrath's central commerce hub: the Eastern Calming Lands Tunnel. Work your way up to open additional stores, and ultimately open up a competing store and put your former boss out of business!

At the start, you only have one item slot to sell food / wares.

As you progress, you can buy or earn more carts and apparatuses to sell a wider variety of goods.

Each work day begins when you arrive at the tunnel and begin preparing the store for the day.

The store will open at X AM each day. The store will close at Y PM each day.

Once the store is open, passing adventurers may choose to stop and shop at your store, provided they are sufficiently enticed.

At the start, your store can only accommodate one shopper at a time. Additional shoppers will need to queue up before they can shop. You may have more shoppers simultaneously shopping the bigger your store gets.

Different times of day bring different customers who will be looking for different things.

Part of the game is learning to identify what different adventurers want, and to make sure the store is stocked with appropriate items as to make the biggest sale and earn tips.

The players that you interact with will all be AI controlled.

Organizing your store so that similar items are grouped together will provide a bonus to how quickly your shoppers are able to find what they are looking for. Conversely, if your store is disorganized with fresh produce scattered across different aisles/carts, shoppers will take longer to finish shopping, which will lead to longer lines.

After waiting long enough in line without being able to enter the store, some shoppers (min/maxers) will become impatient and leave.



Possible extras:

An AM and PM "commute" phase, where you have to make it to work on time otherwise suffer a penalty in your performance grade, thus affecting your pay for the day. Items and stat upgrades can help you more easily complete your commute. Some encounters on your commute can yield ingredients or other items that you can bring to work and possibly sell.

Ability to send and receive tells from AI-controlled "players" which may lead to "quests" or other scenes where you can access new ingredients or upgrades for your shop(s).

Different weather prompting different *hot* items, such as ice cream on a hot day, or hot soups when it is cold and snowing.

Faction hits for selling/not selling to certain races (you reserve the right to refuse sale to any customer for any reason whatsoever, although this will rarely be beneficial) which may have other consequences (or benefits) down the road.

Ability to hire adventurers to hunt/gather ingredients for you at a price.

Ability to go out on hunting/foraging/fishing expeditions in your off time.

"World events" such as earthquakes (tunnel traffic reduced because everyone is out killing dragons), ban waves where certain customers are removed from the world, releases of expansions (in the newspaper as "new continents discovered!") which unlock new items and recipes.

Several possible places in the tunnel to move the cart (or open additional carts) with varying levels of foot traffic. You start in the back of the tunnel near the Unsavory Buckleswasher (your prime competition in the game). Leasing the space near torch 3, 2, and 1 costs more, so your business needs to be able to bring in enough revenue before you can maintain your store at those locations.

Compete against the Buckleswasher for customers. Possible extra: ability to sabotage or hire powerful adventurers to fight/kill him.