I recently got to sit down with Anne Elsberg and Magnus Wahlers of Discounty studio Crinkle Cut Games. Now that the People or Profit expansion is here after its announcement at the Wholesome Games Direct, I was curious to know how they're feeling about the reception to it, the new endings, and how they decided to add or not add new elements to the game.
In this portion of the interview, we chat about the game's free expansion, People or Profit, but if you want to read our other discussion, which focused more on the writing and design of the game, you should check out our other Discounty interview. Now for the tea.
We know that Discounty has been a huge hit, but now that the expansion is out, has reception improved even more? In short - yes. Wahlers describes the reaction as "incredible", and says that players think that the expansion is "targeting things that were pain points before" and are "really happy about the way we have done that". Elsberg adds that they learned a lot from the process, including how to solve problems and address feedback from the base game. "We heard the feedback loud and clear", she says.
I, naturally, also want to ask them about the new endings. "Obviously we did an ending originally that might not have felt like the true ending. So we let it be up to the players to decide the fate of the town with this new update and let it go into different extremes", Elsberg says, adding that she loves all three of the endings. They keep true, in her mind, to the original idea of Discounty: "That good intentions do not always lead to good outcomes".
Both stress that there is no canon ending, but Wahlers cackles a little, declaring his favorite to be the 'evil' ending. "The evil ending is just my flavor of game. I just love being so evil, and I think it's really to such an extreme that it's almost making fun of itself in a nice way". I can identify that sentiment in Discounty immediately - some of the drama in the game is very fun and light-hearted, making it, in my mind, one of the best RPGs money can buy.
Among the other new additions to the game with the People or Profit expansion is the addition of players being able to rebuild the town. Despite this, it wasn't always on the table for Discounty. Elsberg's vision for the game was to keep it "subversive" compared to other games in the genre, meaning that she wanted to "trick players" into thinking that Discounty was the type of game that would allow you to do up the town. "You can't just expand your supermarket without consequence", she says.
Despite this, feedback came through that the players would not rest until they could rebuild the town's various structures. And so it was added. Alongside it, there are three new characters, 35 new items, a housing market, shop events, and, crucially, self-checkout capabilities. Despite Discounty being an indie game, it seems Crinkle Cut had the space to be ambitious, presumably due to the funding they received from local arts grants in Denmark.
What was not added, to my slight surprise, was romance. Naturally, I want to know why. Elsberg gives me a couple of reasons: firstly, Discounty is, at its core, all about the shop - there's no fishing or farming for the same reasons. "If we had done it, we would have done it in a way that was very Discounty-esque, so that it could have somehow been related to how many fish sticks you sell". I laugh out loud at this, because this actually seems like the kind of mechanic that would fit right into Discounty - and one that its players would lean right into.
Secondly, Elsberg says, it would be hard to woo characters. "The gift-giving system is obviously great, and works so well for lots of farming games. But we couldn't really do that with Discounty because you have all these items at your disposal all the time. So you'd just walk to the back of the shop and pick up a cucumber and then give it to someone. It felt kind of weird". I get that - how would players work for love?
So, though Elsberg loves romance in games, highlighting Sailor Moon and Baldur's Gate as examples, these reasons both add up to what she says after: "We wanted to do our own take on it and we just couldn't solve it with the time we had". Players do at least have the Hilda and Karl divorce, which Elsberg says is "tantalizing" because "not enough games do petty drama". Agreed.
You can pick up Discounty, including the new expansion, right now on the Nintendo eShop and Steam. iOS and Android versions are also available for pre-order, so mobile gamers won't have to wait too long. Which is your favorite ending? Let's chat about it over on the Pocket Tactics Discord server.