Gemporium

From the developers at Merge Conflict Studio comes Gemporium, a cute and cozy mining game. You play as a mole helping his grandmother take care of her house while she is on an adventure. The house acts as a gem store, with a hidden mine in the basement. Spend your days mining and polishing gems before selling them to eager customers! But beware, your grandmother got in deep with loan sharks, and now you're responsible for her debts! Can you earn enough to pay off your grandmother's debt, or will the shop be repossessed?

The mines are where you will spend the majority of your time. Explore the mine, searching for a shiny spot on the wall, where gems are located. Your only tool is a hammer to break the rocks and free the gems from the wall. Be careful! If you crack the gems, they will decrease in value. Thankfully, the game has tools and upgrades to make it harder to crack the gems.

There is a workbench where a quick time event is performed to break off any rock residue stuck to the gem before polishing it. Doing this will help maximize the value. There is an upgrade to increase the polishing radius, but for me only the first upgrade was worth it. The first upgrade increased the radius just enough that it significantly decreased the time spent polishing. I felt that getting the next upgrade level wouldn’t be worth the price to pay. I could easily flick my mouse back and forth enough that it would take maybe two or three seconds, so I would rather spend the money on a more worthwhile upgrade.

Grandmother's Debt

The debt that your grandmother has acquired is 1 million gold coins, and it must be paid in installments. At the end of each day, it will show you the next three days, giving you a glimpse if a due date is approaching. With the installment increasing the further along you progress and no calendar to plan ahead, this made it difficult to decide when to buy upgrades. There were times when I would only have two days to get the payment ready for the next due date.

What was the most enjoyable were the artifacts and their descriptions. There are a couple of collection sets for artifacts, and completing a set will double the value of gems. I have completed the first set, which caused the common and uncommon gems to double in value, a much-needed boost. Each artifact has a unique description, an example being a 3-pack of pen styluses with one missing, having the description "one escaped from its tribe." I have been trying to hunt as many of these as possible so that I can read the descriptions on top of the set bonus.

Starting out, there are a decent amount of customers that come visit your shop; this increases as your reputation increases. This was a double-edged sword to me, as I was able to earn profit quicker, but it made stocking gems harder. There is only so much time within the day to mine, polish, and sell the gems. For me, I always tried to sell every customer a gem, but this might not be the best strategy. As with the short window that the store is open, there were times when I was selling unpolished gems. Each customer has a preference on what gem they want to buy and what they would prefer not to buy. Selling them a preferred gem would net double the value, while selling a non-preferred gem would net half the value. A gem that is neither preferred nor disliked would net the standard value.

Final Verdict

Although there are a few changes I would like to see, overall, I enjoyed Gemporium. The developers have posted on Steam that they are aware of some concerns that players have brought up, and they will be looking/working on them. It is a cute, cozy mining game that I recommend people try out. The game is available for $9.99 on Steam, which is a fair price, and the demo is still available to try it out.