A Game Breakdown
Overview
Genre: Simulation/Casual RPG
Platform: iOS, Android, Windows, MacOS
Overview: Shop Titans is a casual RPG in the simulation genre which has you take the role of a shopkeeper, crafting gear and selling it to customers by haggling about prices! We can build, expand and customize the shop to our liking, hire and send heroes on expeditions for loot and upgrade gear. It is a simple tap based game where we click on a gear to craft it, and interact with customers to sell the same.
Gameplay Brief:
ARPI: $11.2�Global Release: August 18th, 2019
FTUE
Core Loop
Unique Selling Point
Be the Shopkeeper!
Everyone has played RPGs where you are the hero,�and using your great gear, fight enemies and save the day!
Shop Titans takes this gameplay loop, and completely �flips it over!�Players now take the role of the shopkeeper who gear up�such heroes with high quality gear. �Players get to manage their own shop, decorate it as they�please while also getting rewarded for it. They get to equip�heroes with their gear, and send them out for dungeon-esque�quests.�
Features
The Shop
This is where the player spends most of their time�as well as money! �Players are given the unique opportunity to design �their shop exactly how they’d like, with almost no �restrictions at all.
There are a few key elements to talk about.
Racks�Racks are where gear is displayed. Customers will walk in and look at �racks to see if there is any gear they like, else react if that rack has no�gear whatsoever
Counter�This is where the transactions happen. Customers and Champions will�flock around this furniture to buy items. Upgrade -> more energy from sale.
The path between racks and counters must be traversable.
Racks
Counter
Storage
bin
Crafting
Crafting is the core feature of this game.�Players can craft unlocked items to sell them in the shop. Crafting items require resources�(dungeon as well as normal).
Normal resources are generated over time, while dungeon resources can only be gained�from quest runs. �The amount of resources received (both passively and actively) can be increased via�building upgrades.�Each resource has a maximum amount that can be stored. This amount can be upgraded�via upgrading the storage bin.
Only a certain amount of items can be crafted at a time. This amount is known as crafting�slots. Crafting slots can be upgraded via gems or coins.
Workers
Bread and butter of crafting.�Unlocking workers unlocks different blueprints to craft
Two workers are locked behind IAPs. No other way to acquire them.
Buildings
Guild driven feature. They are sort of “huts” of �each NPC. Upgrading these have different�effects based on the NPC it belongs to.
Buildings can be broken down into 3 categories:
Worker Building
Worker buildings have a single function. Upgrading a �building will increase the maximum level for the worker�that building belongs to.
Resources Building
Resources building also serve a similar purpose. Upgrading these buildings will speed up the production of that specific resource. There are buildings like Iron Mine, Lumberyard, Tannery, Smelter, etc.
Special Building
Special buildings provide various benefits to the whole guild.
This feature is heavily guild oriented as any upgrade done by one member of the guild automatically happens for all other members of the guild!
Customer Interaction
The concept of customer interaction revolves heavily around “energy”. Apart from just �selling and refusing to sell, there is a lot more actions that players can perform.
Suggest
Players have the ability to suggest a different item to the customer by spending energy.�There are a few constraints though. Players can only suggest items that are on display�on racks. Different items require different amounts of energy to suggest, due to which, �this feature is heavily energy reliant.
Small Talk
This is a chance based energy source. There is a 70% chance of success, and 30% of �failure. Upon succeeding, the player is rewarded with 10% of their max energy. Upon�failing, the player is charged 7% of their max energy.
Discount
Players can discount the price of the requested item, gaining a certain amount of�energy (based on the item), while losing 50% of the item cost.
Surcharge
Players can conversely double the price of the requested item, losing a certain amount of�energy (based on the item).
Champions
Champions are characters that are used to lead heroes during a quest.�A quest roster can only contain one champion at a time. Each champion�provides a different leadership skill to the squad as well as other buffs.
Champions can only be bought using Champion Coins (with the exception of�Argon, who is unlocked in a tutorial).
Champion Coins
Champion coins can be earned from chests, quests, Fortune Zone*, �Piggy Bank*, Gifts, Champion Requests, etc.
Champion Request
In the shop, champions can randomly occur and request a certain amount of�any specific item. Fulfilling this order will reward the player with that �champions coin.
Heroes
Heroes are a part of the main endgame of Shop Titans. These are characters that you can �gear up, and send on quests to fight bosses and collect resources for you. Without the�resources collected by them on dungeons, it is impossible to craft most of the gear available�in the game.
There are 3 categories of heroes:
Fighters - Tank Type�Rogue - Crit Type�Spellcasters - Consistent Damage Type
All of these classes are further divided into 6 subclasses, making 18 total type of heroes, each�with their own stats and skills. �Subclass Details - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NL7It7NgeQIaJ7zs3e5mOY1d-aRsP1RTEULgfu1D-XY/edit#gid=0
Consumables for Heroes
Seeds
Seeds give extra stats for heroes and champs�Seed of Power (red) +4HP�Seed of Vitality (green) +1HP�Seed of Resistance (blue) +4DEF
Each hero can have 40 of each seed type.�Once a seed is used, they’re gone forever.
Blossoms
Blossoms are items that increase the seed cap�of champs and heroes to 80. Each blossom �increases the cap of its respective seed.
Skills
Skills are buffs that heroes will naturally acquire over�the course of dungeons. There are over 500 skills �available in the game, all of them buffing different �elements such as:
and so on.
Quests
Quests are a major part of the game.�They’re essentially timegated dungeons, where you can �send your squad of geared up heroes and champions, and �receive loot like chests, gear and crafting resources.
These crafting resources are exclusive to quests, and without�these resources, it is impossible to craft most of the gear in the�game.
Quest also rewards the player with experience, specifically�Champion/Hero experience, which allows them to access �more difficult quests.
There are a total of 11 available quests in the game (some locked �behind events).
Experience
Experience is the general progression system in the game. �There are 3 kinds of experience that a player can receive:
Merchant Experience: The main kind of progression experience. It is received when�the player sells an item. Upgrading these levels gives access to new workers, new�furnitures, hero slots as well as the maximum crafting slots.
Champion/Hero Experience: After quests, the heroes/champs that were sent on it �receive experience. Levelling this up increases HP, Attack, Defense, Skills and the �max tier of items that they can equip.
Worker Experience: Experience gained by workers as items are crafted by the player.�Increasing this allows the worker to craft higher tier gear, as well as craft at a higher�speed.
Furnishing
Furnitures are everything that is displayed throughout the shop.
There are different type of furnitures available, each having their own purpose.
Counter - Used to interact with customers�Racks - Used to display crafted to customers�Resource bins - Stores crafting resources�Indoor Decorations - Increases prestige, customers can interact with it for energy�Outdoor Decorations - Increases prestige�Flooring/Wallpapers - Cosmetic purposes only
Upgrading furniture increases the maximum energy, and upgrading racks will increase the �number of items displayed to the customers.
Pets 🐈🐈
Pets are decorative companions�that can be fed.
It simply gives prestige and energy�when a customer interacts with them!
Market
Simple user controlled market where people can buy/sell items for�gems or coins. There are item tiers which restrict lower levelled players from�buying gear they should not have access to.
Piggy Bank
Retention based gameplay feature where the player�must collect a certain amount of gold each day, and �are rewarded for it.
Every 7th day, the player gets a golden piggy bank�which contains much better rewards.
Guilds
Guilds are one of the most important features of this game. Most of the aspects of this game are linked to guilds in one form or another. Guilds have a member limit that can be increased by upgrading the Town Hall.
Some important features are: Guild Coins, Bounty Boards, Perks/Boosts, Friendships, Upgrade help, Gifts, Cleaning and Requests.
Guild Coins
Guild coins is a currency earned by helping guild members, cleaning shops and doing bounties. These can be �spent on grab bags, or for refilling regular resources (not dungeon). �Grab bags can reward a player with seeds, champ coins, resources and other loot. There are 3 type of loot bags, and on �buying one, the player can receive any one of these 3 bags. Each bag contains different rewards. Every 7th bag is a special bag that will give better rewards.
Bounty Boards
Players can take up bounties here, which are simple tasks like crafting an item, surcharging, discounting, etc.�On completing a bounty, players are rewarded with guild coins, and the guild is rewarded with trophies. Every monday, �these trophies are converted to renown, and players can start the process again.
Perks/Boosts
Perks are permanent upgrades that affects all guild members. There 18 perks available that increase capacity, increase energy or reduce the time between changing guild’s choice (building chosen to be focused).
Boosts are temporary buffs that can be activated multiple times. They give buffs like increased crafting speed, questing speed, resource regeneration and XP Bonus.
Friendship�When two guildmates interact by sending gifts, cleaning shops etc, they build a guild friendship. As the friendship level increases, the amount of energy received for cleaning their shop increases.
Upgrade Help�Guild members can ask for help in reducing their furniture upgrade time. Each guild member can reduce 10% of the upgrade time, for a max of 50%. �Members who offer help in reducing upgrade time are rewarded with guild coins.
Gifts�Players can send gifts to 3 guildmates every day. When a gift is sent, both of them receive an increase in their friendship level.
Cleaning�Players can visit guildmates’ shop and clean dusty pieces of furniture. Cleaning these will provide energy to that guildmate, and the player would be rewarded with 10 guild coins.
Requests�Players can request items present in the market from their guildmates. This is a way of �transferring items between guildmates.
LiveOps
Regular Events
Every month there are 4 regularly occurring events in Shop Titans. All of these events follow the same cycle every month.
King’s Caprice - Week 1�Tower of Titans - Week 2�Dragon Invasion - Week 3�Lost City of Gold - Week 4
King’s Caprice
King’s Caprice is a week long guild crafting event where the king �will ask you to craft items for his favour. �The quality of the item delivered will affect the amount of favour �rewarded.
Earning favour progress a battlepass-esque system which has a �total requirement (sum of all guild members) and personal �requirement.
Royal Merchants (VIP) were an extra track of rewards.
Rewards
There are 2 exclusive rewards, first being the limited edition stamp. �This is a resource that allows the player to surcharge �customers for a second time! We can use these �stamps to surcharge the king as well.
Second reward are antique tokens that can be spent to buy �content from previous seasonal packs.�The price of items varies on the tier of the blueprints.
These items can be rerolled by using 25 antique tokens to get the next �day’s offerings. Antique tokens do carry over between events, so there is no FOMO of �losing the tokens.
Apart from these items, players can get gems, champ coins, research�scrolls, chest, keys and a lot of other special rewards.
Overall, this event had a very positive reception from the playerbase.�There is a report about the post launch aftermath:�https://st-central.net/kings-caprice-the-aftermath/
Tower of Titans
Tower of Titans is a 48 hour, single-player only event that only occurs on weekends.
This is a quest based event, which challenges players to clear floors within a tower. �Guild progress does not affect personal progress.
There are 5 towers, each with higher difficulty and better reward. Which tower a player�receives depends on the merchant level of the player, with a set tower assigned to �each level.
Core Concept
Players begin at floor 1, and are only allowed 4 participants per fight. Only one floor can be fought at a time. �Quest time : 1 hour�Rest time : 2 hours
There are a total of 30 levels, and boss levels are every 3 levels. Rewards are given for clearing a boss level only.
Rewards are generally champion coins, gems, dungeon rewards, research blueprints, etc. with the rewards improving for each tower.
Consumable Sink
This event by design itself is practically impossible for non-spenders to complete. �For any player with a single roster to use, there will be a 3 hour timegate for each level. To complete 30 levels, they’d need 90 hours, but the event only lasts for 48 hours.
Even if we ignore the 2 hour rest timer, a player would have to login once every hour for 15 hours a day!�https://www.reddit.com/r/shoptitans/comments/slekyq/can_tower_of_titans_last_3_days_instead/
The solution is simply to use gems or consumables that reduce rest time. Guild boosts are also extremely important for this event.
To ensure that players are incentivized to use these consumables, the reward is an extremely strong titan-soul,�which can be used to upgrade any hero to an exclusive titan class hero.
Titan class heroes are stronger than normal heroes, and also get access to a 4th skill slot, which�can be extremely helpful in harder quests.
Dragon Invasion
Dragon Invasion is a 5 day long guild based event. This event involves �sending heroes to fight alongside your guildmates’ heroes and fend off �against waves of dragons. This event is split into 2 phases:
Preparation Phase
This phase runs for 20 hours, and involves assigning 5 heroes and�5 boosters (optional) to send into the fight. Each hero has a set damage�value that they contribute to the fight, and boosters increase the damage �value, making this event serve well as a booster drain.
Assault Phase
Once the prep phase ends, for the next 12 hours, the �guild’s airship will attack the dragon, slowly draining it’s �HP based on the total damage contributed by the guild.
There are a total of 15 dragons, each with increasing HP.�Killing a dragon unlocks the reward for it.
The rewards are gems, blueprints, keys, chests, dragon marks etc.
The important reward here are dragon marks. �Dragon marks are resources that allow furnitures to be �upgraded beyond their max of level 15. It can also be used �to rush upgrades instead of using gems, making it a very valuable �resource.
Apart from these, on milestone 10, players are rewarded with a �Dragon’s Hoard, which is a unique super-resource bin, which can�hold every single resource in the game.
Due to this reason, guilds are inclined to perform as well as they can,�which would require each member to use a lot of boosters to �get a high collective damage value.
Lost City of Gold
Lost City of Gold, or LCoG is a 48 hour guild based questing event. Each guild member must send�team of heroes to acquire “pure gold”, and based on the amount earned, rewards are received �through a milestone track similar to other events.
Gameplay
Each guild member must individually send teams to fight whichever �difficulty quest they can. The quest will be randomly selected �during the event, but will have multiple difficulty tiers. �Amount of pure gold received is based on two things : Difficulty of �Quest, Number of heroes sent.
All of the difficulties are available right off the bat.
Similar to Tower of Titans, there is a 1hr quest timer, and 2hr rest timer. However, players are allowed to send as many teams at a time as they’d like. �In the same fashion, consumables and gems are very important here in order to maximize the amount of pure gold a player receives.
Keybearers
Each difficulty has an unlockable keybearer to challenge. These keybearers are unlocked�in an ascending order, requiring a set number of overall LCoG quest clears to progress. �However, keybearers will only appear one at a time. This means that T1 keybearer must be �killed before T2 keybearer appears.
Keybearers reward players with keys (duh), as well as pure gold.
�Objective
Guild : 80,000 pure gold�Personal : 3,500 pure gold
These are the maximum amount needed in order to claim all available rewards.
Battlepass Based Events
There have been multiple seasonal battlepasses, called content passes. All of these �provide customizations around the theme, decorations, exclusive pets �and blueprints.
Players must complete tasks in order to receive the currency of that�pass. Rewards are granted based on milestones which are completed�when a player has enough currency.
There is a premium track for the BP, and it can be unlocked with�only gems.
So far there have been 5 content passes:
Year of the Rabbit�Halloween�Cinco De Mayo�Year of the Tiger�Avatar: The Last Airbender
Monetization
Together, China and USA make up for over 70% of the lifetime revenue!
However, the case of China is a curious and confusing one. �While US had consistently been giving $6-8k daily since launch, China appeared in the earnings on Jan 10th, 2020. By Jan 20th, it was giving over 6 times the income of any other country! �On Sept 23rd, 2020, the earnings from �China hit 0$, and there was never any �more revenue reported from that country.
Similarly, on Feb 18-19th, Switzerland�totalled an income of over $100k, when �they had been averaging under $1k �daily.
Both of these are unexplained.
Japan and TikTok
Outside of China and America, Kabam also had one more�country that they wanted to target. Japan was the third �major market where Kabam wanted growth.
Kabam partnered with Nativex to use TikTok to build brand�awareness in the Japanese Market. This was done through�TikTok hashtag challenges and custom stickers.
End result? There were over 27,000 user created videos�for the challenge, and a total of 56M+ video views.
Regular Purchases
1 Gem = ₹0.75 = $0.009�Anchor Prices: 1 Gem = 105.5 Gold = 0.03 Ascension Shard = 0.03 Champion Coins
Minimum IAP: ₹179 = $2.16
Maximum IAP: ₹8900 = $107.59
Special Offer & Welcome Pack
The value mentioned is actually a 100% accurate�through anchor prices.
Premium Packages
One of the main monetization models in the game. These packs contain �special blueprints and gear that cannot be obtained from �any other source (apart from antique store).
There are over 200 premium packages that were available in the �game at some point!�Most of these packages were offered during different seasonal or special �events.
These packages are generally priced between $12.99 and $18.99
Royal Merchant
The most purchased IAP in the game, Royal Merchant is a �subscription based VIP service.
This service is the most valuable purchase in the game, with�advantages being given in almost everything just by purchasing�it. Event reward tracks have a locked track for Royal Merchants.�Dungeons have an extra rewards for them. �Royal Merchants also get extra gems from gem packs and early�access on future offers.
Apart from this, there is a loyalty system that rewards people�for being subscribed for longer.
Price: ₹819 or $9.99 monthly�No annual purchase option available�
Top IAPs
Why do people buy
Shop Titans has a heavy focus towards the US market, given their exorbitant prices. The Royal Merchant subscription costs ₹819 every single month! For context, I’m paying less than that per month for Netflix+Hotstar+Prime!
However, for US these prices are acceptable. The biggest hurdle for them is getting the first purchase, which is done through the ‘Starter Pack’, that offers a 4th crafting slot which is extremely helpful for players. By the time this offer pack is shown, players have already realised the value of crafting slots.
This pack is also what people who call the monetization “extreme” are okay with purchasing. �https://steamcommunity.com/app/1258080/discussions/0/2997675206116124667/
Apart from this, Royal Merchant is the most value for money IAP in the game. Any avid player would not think twice about purchasing this, as it improves gameplay in almost every aspect.
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