The game is structured on daily cycle, with the goal to have repaid the debt of 820,000 pix (the game's currency) by the end of one month. Each day is structured into fixed periods. Time passes when the player operates the shop, goes adventuring for items, or returns to the shop after visiting other shops or guilds in the town, limiting the total number of activities that can be done in a day.
When the player chooses to operate the shop, they can place items on the shop's shelves, with certain spots, such as near the storefront window, being more lucrative to draw in buyers. When a potential buyer selects an item, the player can bargain to try to get as much profit from the sale as possible, but ineffectively bargaining will cause the buyer to leave without purchasing anything. Successful bargains earn points towards the player's merchant level, allowing for improvement of the shop and selling benefits once higher levels are gained. Customers may also bring goods to sell to Recette, requiring the player to try to barter and buy the item well below cost.
When adventuring, the player recruits a member of the local adventure guild. The player has access to only one adventurer at the start of the game, but as the game progresses, new guild members with various skills and abilities can be accessed. Through Tear's magic, Recette is invulnerable in the dungeon but cannot interact with the creatures within it, and instead watches over the adventurer, helping to collect items dropped by creatures or supplying healing items. The player has a limited amount of storage they can carry from the dungeon, and should the adventurer fall and cannot be healed, the player must drop most of their inventory to allow Recette to carry the adventurer out of the dungeon. Each dungeon features a number of randomly generated dungeon levels, along with a final treasure room at a specific depth. Items found in dungeons can be used as equipment for the adventurer, sold at the shop, or combined with other items to make more useful and valuable goods. The adventurer gains experience points and gains levels as he or she kills monsters, making the character more effective in deeper dungeons.
Should the player miss the debt payment deadline, Recette is forced to sell the shop and live in a cardboard box; the player can choose to restart the game retaining their merchant level and items, but not pix amount. Successfully completing the game unlocks three further game modes: "New Game+" which restarts the game but allows the player to keep their items and merchant and adventure levels from the completed game, "Endless Mode" where the player can continue the game indefinitely without having to pay any debt, and "Survival Mode", where the player must try to complete ever-increasing debt payments on a weekly basis. Survival Mode offers two versions, Normal Survival, where the items and levels are retained week to week, and Survival Hell, where these do not carry onward.
Development
Recettear was originally developed by the dōjin soft developer EasyGameStation and released only in Japan. The game was brought to the Western audiences with English localization by Carpe Fulgur, a two-man development group consisting of Andrew Dice and Robin Light-Williams who had come to meet through the Something Awful forums. Dice had been interested in English translations of Japanese games and following in the footsteps of Ted Woolsey in the translation of several Square Japanese titles. After attempting to gain employment at a localization company in California, Dice contacted Light-Williams and proposed the idea of forming their own company for performing localizations. Dice saw value in the possibility of bringing Japanese titles to the West as "above all what the Western gaming audience likes is a unique experience", an opportunity afforded by the growing dōjin market in Japan.
Reception
Recettear's Western release was well received by critics who considered the game a surprise title. The Metro acknowledged that while the idea of a game around running a shop would be the "dullest activity possible", Recettear's shopkeeping is a "strangely fulfilling activity", with some deep gameplay aspects that are not apparent on an initial play. Quintin Smith of Eurogamer considered the shopkeeping activity rather addictive, similar to "a tiny gambling session, where a confluence of factors can result in you having the best or worst day ever", leading the player to play "just one more turn". Richard Cobbett of PC Gamer noted that "while you do spend most of it doing the exact same simple things, doing so quickly becomes a frothy, capitalistic bubblewrap". IGN's Charles Onyett noted that, once the player has learned the habits of various characters, the price haggling "degenerates into a thoughtless, mechanical exercise", but random fluctuations in the market such as the result of news events or trending items helps to keep the shopkeeping interesting.
Reviewers had mixed opinions on the dungeon exploration aspects. Smith praised the exploration, considering it "more competent than any number of games he could mention", citing the control of the adventure character and the unique attack patterns of the enemies. Others found the dungeon crawling somewhat repetitive and made more difficult by the randomness of the dungeon creation. Onyett considered that "the combat can become wearyingly repetitive in later stages" with larger dungeons, but that it suited the purposes for Recettear appropriately. Sam Marchello of RPGamer found that she would have often arrive on a new dungeon floor near a trap, allowing enemies to swarm her characters without much chance to respond, and believes that "players may find themselves reloading save files simply to get themselves into a better position".
The English translation by Carpe Fulgur was universally praised. Onyett called the translation "very well done", with "the tone is bubbly and frequently funny in an internet message board kind of way", and ties in the various gameplay elements well. Smith called Carpe Fulgur's translation "a fantastic job", helping to craft the world and characters to a point where he cared enough for certain characters to want to undercharge them for sales despite the game's premise. The Metro's review stated "the translation is superb and almost the equal of genres bests such as Disgaea and Paper Mario".
At the 2011 Independent Games Festival, Recettear was given two honorable mentions for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Excellence in Design categories.
