After playing Fortune Seller’s demo a while back, I came away from it feeling interested in the final game. However, upon playing the final product for myself, I come away feeling a little cold. Fortune Seller is a fun prospect and concept, but it suffers from an overtuned difficulty and a steep learning curve.

I’ve discussed a bit about Fortune Seller in my earlier preview, but the gist is simple. You play the new employee of an antique shop that seems to be run by an enigmatic and dangerous patron. Each day, you have a quota to fill, satisfying customer needs in order to pay off some sort of debt. If you don’t pay the full amount, the owner of the shop takes your life as payment.

At the end of an in-game week, there is a lunar event that serves as a sort of boss level. The debt quota is much higher than others, and there is a sort of modifier that may change how you need to approach it. It feels a fair bit like Balatro, in a sense.

To fill your quota, you must (of course) sell items by arranging them on the board. If you fill the entire board with items, then you get a bonus. Modifiers on your items also provide bonuses, as well as Tarot and Spell cards you can purchase at the shop between rounds.

The problem I ran into is that while you have a variety of tools at your disposal, the debt ceiling increases so rapidly that I had trouble getting past the first week, even after hours of play. Granted, I enjoyed playing and trying different strategies, but I was stuck on the first “Zodiac Sign” (deck) with no real ability to progress.

With that said, I think given the time and attention, once a little bit of progress is made, you’ll unlock a variety of things almost all at once. It could have been that my struggles were just part of the dev’s intentional learning curve. In that case, I would say that Fortune Seller is definitely not for more casual players.

Overall, I think Fortune Seller has a little bit of polishing to do in the difficulty department. The animation and art style are good, the music is good, but the difficulty is a sticking point that can easily put people off. I hope the development team takes some time to polish things a bit more, or maybe adds some potential difficulty adjustment options. Right now, I’d say check Fortune Seller out on sale, but check it out nonetheless.

A PC Review Copy of Fortune Seller was provided by Kiwick for the purposes of this review.

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Fortune Seller

$19.99 USD

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Great Art design
• Fun Gameplay
• Great Atmosphere

Cons

• Steep Difficulty