PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Ahoy! 🔮✨
I'm Brent Arnold, developer of Final Profit: A Shop RPG. Before embarking on my solo dev adventure I was cinematographer on the game Necrobarista, and before that I studied animation and did freelance music for indie games.
Some important context about who I am and how I work is that I'm ✨ some flavour 🪄 of autistic, this reflects in the stories I tell, the structure and complexity of the game mechanics I build, and my zeal for ideals.
TELL US ABOUT FINAL PROFIT.
Final Profit is a lot. I always struggle to describe it because it does so many things at once and I want to talk about all of them, I'll do my best.
It's a story driven shop sim management rpg hybrid (and now also a roguelike if you include Just Shop Mode which just released!).
The gameplay primarily has you moving between two modes of play. There's the fast paced shop gameplay in the store, where you try to make as much money as you can to outpace your debt. Then there's the relaxed chill exploration of the world, where you prep for the shop and find ways to improve it.
Of course this all changes completely later in the game as you gradually unlock more and more systems, the game is constantly evolving around you as you progress, leading you further up the corporate ladder and deeper into the abyss of capitalism.
There's also the story to consider which is a big part of the game. It's comedic at times, and serious at others. You're presented with tough choices that you'll have to really think about because the outcomes are far reaching and can branch both the story and gameplay mechanics. With tough moral quandaries.
You play as the exiled Queen of the Fae, Mab. Who swiftly dons the pseudonym Madama Biz as her business persona. On a quest to take down capitalism by becoming the best at it. But it's very hard to stay on the straight and narrow when money gets involved.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
An extremely tough and uncertain journey.
I had been tinkering with the idea of a shop game as a hobby for a while, there were 3 prototypes before landing on the shop mechanics we see in Final Profit. But the 4th one had my friends telling me "Wow, this is actually good" and I took that as a sign that I could expand it into something serious.
This timing lined up with the initial lockdowns in my city, I could see the writing on the wall that we were heading into many years of people being forced into unsafe work environments (by the demands of capitalism) and I wanted a way to remove myself from having to be a part of that. So going solo made sense, and very fortunately it has paid off, but it was a big gamble. I survived (barely) on my savings and launched just as I ran out of money entirely.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
The engine I chose was RPG Maker MV, an often controversial choice. But I'd been using RPG Maker engines as a hobbyist for 10 years before I began development, I knew them very well and that meant I could twist and exploit them to do some crazy things. They're also extremely quick to work with, I don't think there's any chance I could've made a game this large and complex in the same amount of time using one of the more commonly accepted options.
There are definitely limitations, and things I wish they could do. But that just makes my brain do loops until I come to a novel solution or a new idea. So much of what Final Profit is, came from the limitations I was working with. And that led to something quite special.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
The real answer to this is marketing, but that's boring. Overall I think I've done a decent job with it, but it is unbelievably difficult to get press looking at the game, even when it wins awards or goes to prestigious festivals. Maybe one day I'll get a Metacritic score, or maybe I'll wear that TBD as a badge forever. Either option tickles me.
At least players love the game! They are constantly spreading the word and keeping it alive, I'm so grateful to them.
Now, a fun hurdle. My foolishness. Quite a few times I've implemented wide scale systems in a silly way where if I want to change anything it's going back 1 by 1 and manually fixing something. The biggest one is the real estate system. There's 133 of these property markers spread throughout the game, twice I've had to go back through every single one and make little edits to something. And both times I (double, and then triple-foolishly) decided that I didn't have to retrofit them to have a single edit point because "this time it's fine for sure!". Well, it's never fine, and I have been sitting on a change I should do to them for months because I don't want to do it again! It's also limited what I could do with the real estate system in general, if I had more freedom to edit them I could do things like let us change the rent rate or buy and sell them remotely, but those are likely dreams for Final Profit II.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Know when to break the rules. But do so with meaning, and a plan.
My example of the above is that I disregard advice to avoid scope creep, but that's because I know I can keep the complexity straight in my head, and my overall plan is not based on a big launch like most games are, but on a long growing tail. And to keep that tail growing I need to keep driving marketing beats, and in my case that means more updates. It's a style that was inspired by games like Terraria and Minecraft, but it's not a one size fits all solution. Find your own way to succeed.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
I want more people to play the game! If you see this, give it a chance, then tell your friends! I promise it'll surprise you.
- Brent 🍎
Save 50% on Final Profit: A Shop RPG on Steam (steampowered.com)
