Mgnum 7
2020
Last updated
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2020
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Aaaalright .49 and .39 and 1.50 iiis... eeerm? Two something... Is the guy in the back stealing? Next!
Do math, serve your customers, do your best each day. Grow your shop in this hectic first person cashier experience. Doing the math in head, operating a hefty old machine, while customers wait or take your goods.
Fun stems from the hectic customers, gesturing, time pressure over doing a quick math and controlling your cash register, collecting money, hoping not to miscalculate and lose money.
I probably came up with this idea while waiting in line at a grocery store, that was taking a while. I generally wonder through different perspectives, whats its like to be the one guy just about to buy the one item, when someone is having trouble paying in front of them, what its like to be the cashier who works 12 hours a day for a minimum paycheck. What are their motivations to stand in there and have any good mood and energy.
I really enjoy is tangibility of product design. With the touch screen digitized world we have lost a lot of the pleasures of the mid and late 20th Century. The boxiness and chrome on cars, the buttons to twist and press on household objects. Same goes for cashiers turned into automated scanners.
The theme remained undecided, but you can see how secondary it is whether the line is made up of people, aliens or boxes. Of course the theme would affect the goods coming in and its shape, the price and how people expect to pay, how they communicate their emotion in the line. Secondary doesn't mean it is not important or has no effect on the gameplay. Things that have no impact should not be touched and spent time on. Just secondary.
Learning to express ideas effectively is the best skill you can have. Developed only better by being an excellent communicator towards your team mates to collaborate and then ultimately to your audience. Videogames just like any other art form really is just translating the experience you want to share with someone else.
Last but not least computers took away our ability to do math in head. Math is fun to very specific audiences (think fans and other Germans) so I knew this mechanic would be a hit or miss. There's nice complexity having to do your own math. It slows you down, its naturally progressive skill so you get faster with time. You can introduce the idea of stocking at prices such as 1.99 instead of 2.00 to make some cash, but only if your math is good enough to deal with the missing cent. You can get into deals such as 2 for 5.49, 5 for 7.25 when customer brings in 4 items. Tax.
