Do you like mystery? Have you always wanted to work at a major supermarket but not go through the application hassle? Then you need to try Discounty, created by Danish developers Crinkle Cut Games and published by PQube. This game blends growth management with suspenseful mystery to make a cute pixel-style grocery game. Discounty starts with you riding the bus to a new town. While talking to the driver, you hear an advertisement in the background for a store chain called Discounty. You finally arrive in this small town where your aunt lives called Blomkest. The characters and setting perfectly highlight the small-town charm and sense of closeness living there brings. The point of the game is for you to take over running a convenience store for your aunt and make it grow to be the epicenter of the town. This comes at a cost. You must uncover the town's mystery that has a twist reveal, and you will never guess who's behind it all.
This game’s style is a mix of modern-day coloring with 16-bit SNES-inspired graphics. The colors in the game are vibrant and fit with Discounty’s theme. It’s a perfect blend of retro gaming and modern-day style. The color palette makes the town feel warm and charming, while the outer woods and harbor have a colder, darker shade to their background. The vibrant colors and style are reminiscent of Stardew Valley.
Each character has their own backstory and interrelationship with each other. While running the store, a few characters appear to not have any ties to the plot but are there to help boost your sales and add variety. However, most of the characters that you see every day in and outside of the store are all a part of the bigger story of Discounty. Each character is a different insight into what's going on in Blomkest. What made the storyline so compelling was that each character's questline relied on the advancement of the overall story. The developer highlighted the sense of community by organizing the story this way.
Your main goal is to build relationships with the vendors and run your store. But you also need to solve the town's environmental crisis mystery. Your boss is your aunt, who gives you the tricks of the trade and helps you get started. After she gives you the keys to the store, you’re on your way to building a supersized grocery store. You must build relationships with vendors to prioritize selling local products. That means doing favors and selling enough of their product to move on to the next tier. You also get rewards for selling enough items or ordering enough product. You exchange those points for more expensive items, upgrades to your cash register, and more inventory space. You quickly understand why it behooves you to have as many “pockets” as possible as you progress in the game. One thing I really enjoyed is how, as the game progressed, a story unfolded in front of you. It's not just building your store but also figuring out why the town is going through environmental struggles. The first time you arrive, there is a team studying the mysterious fog plaguing the forest. From there it moves on to the bay being polluted, and then fish mysteriously disappearing. The best part? The major plot twist at the end. The person who you think is behind it all may not be who they seem.
The pacing of this game can be a little tedious. I found that I was repeating the same steps for a good amount of the tasks they set up. One in particular required you to sell 10 items of a certain product in one day. It took me almost a week in game time to accomplish this. There are buffers to nudge customers towards one item or the other, but there is no guarantee that a customer needs that item. Keeping your store organized and utilizing all of your available space is very important. Otherwise you may block off avenues to quickly get from one side of the store to the other. As the primary person restocking items, it makes it very frustrating to constantly move things around just to get through. That being said, your store builds very quickly, which helps keep things fresh. After completing the game, it does offer the ability to go back and continue running the store. Unfortunately I felt no reason to since I had unlocked all of the extras available to me. Most of the things that were “unlockable” you needed as you progressed in the story. I did notice a quick travel option to get from one end of town to the other, but I didn’t find it necessary.
Like the art style, Discounty’s music and sounds felt new yet nostalgic; the music playing while roaming the town reminded me of playing Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Specifically, it had similar tones to walking in either Kakiriko Village or Kokiri Forest. Something lighthearted and fun. It had no problem slowing down and being ominous when going to the forest or when something suspenseful happens. NPCs didn’t actually talk, but their speaking noises did line up with the speech bubbles. The lack of voice in the game did not take anything away from the style or story in any way. It fit the scheme of the game very well.
Discounty was a lot of fun! In total, I clocked about 104 hours from start to finish with this game and was impressed with the size and completeness of the game. It has gained a lot of traction, with over 100k copies downloaded since its release on August 21st. They released a patch shortly after release to solve some quality-of-life issues. In the notice they also teased new content to make playing the game after you complete the story more compelling. the The game has been released on all major platforms, including Steam. If you are a fan of sim games, cute art styles, and a sense of mystery, or you want something similar to Stardew Valley, then this game is worth the playthrough. Discounty is a hidden gem among indies that could go far!
