HPAWS is a really interesting little shop simulation game where you run a weapon shop, working with various smiths in order to research, build and sell the best weapons available and progress through a bunch of little quests in order to get fame, money and give experience to the buyers of your gear. I really enjoyed it and I wish I had more time to play it because the fun of discovering new recipes and upgrading your shop really hooked me. On the down side, there are a few options that this game really could've used to make the experience truly perfect.
The game starts you with an almost empty shop and a few blacksmiths to work for you. Smiths are the bread and butter of your interactions in HPAWS. You decide where they work - they can improve four stats on weapons you make and each smith class has preferences to what stat they improve faster. Smiths can also be explorers - helpful to find items on the world map - and merchants - to give more money when selling and get discounts when buying. The way you make weapons is pretty simple; You choose a weapon from your catalog and if you have the materials, you start working on it. Each weapon has different growth values for the four stats, so you need to assign your smiths to the right stations for the job. You can also give your weapon boosts - either your smiths or mercenaries that you pay a one time fee give a boost to your current project. When it's done, you can apply an enchantment on it, provided you have the right items.
When you're done crafting enough weapons - you can only sell three at once - you go to certain maps to sell them. Different maps have different heroes and they each have their preferences, so you get a sense of what you need to craft and where to sell it. Sometimes there are random events that boost some aspects of the game - like you selling items for more whilst heroes get less experience from their purchases. Some other random events are pretty weird though, you can randomly get boosts to your currently crafted weapons, as well as you can get negative events that lower its stats. It's a bit frustrating because of the randomness. Sometimes these events even come on the shape of a simple question with two answers and only one will give you a positive effect. It feels a bit arbitrary and not fun.
While your shop is growing you get the opportunity to hire more smiths in order to work faster on your projects, research new recipes using the items you've discovered on the world map and search for items. This leads to an increase in costs and you need to be able to pay for your smiths each month. There is a big chunk of time in a month and the game is good about warning you if you don't have enough money. There are always contracts you can complete, but I've noticed that the 'cakewalk' ones that were supposed to be very easy were kinda impossible for me to complete, weirdly enough. Smiths can get stressed after a while too, so you can send them on vacations to raise their spirits.
The biggest problem I had with the game was its speed. There are three speed settings and a pause button and you can switch manually between them, but I feel that it needed an automatic speed option somewhere in the menu. Whenever nothing is going on, the game should be on pause. When a smith needs your attention because they've found buyers for your stuff or because they are done exploring, the game should automatically pop that window instead of waiting for you to click on them, like it does when they're done researching! When you're just waiting for things to complete, the game should go at full speed. As it is, I felt that time was either going by too slow or I was missing things and being un-optimal because it was going too fast.
Otherwise, this game is full of great stuff. You can buy upgrades for your shop - after a while you get bigger stations that can accommodate more smiths, decorations that boost their stats and weird devices like a coffee machine and a fireplace that didn't seem to have any tangible effects. You also get a dog that seemingly only takes space in your shop and you also eventually get an avatar of yourself that you can move to help smiths in specific stations. There is a neat job tree that you can make your smiths climb through, which changes what stat they give your weapons and what boosts they can perform. There are plenty of cameos - each smith and special hero characters are based out of something else - and there are also yearly events where the weapons you've crafted are judged.
The way you unlock new areas in the world map using the fame you've gathered is interesting and makes you wonder what the next set of heroes and items will be, but I'm a bit perplexed by the move to a new region; You lose the opportunity to discover the weapons that were tied to the previous one. This means that the materials are unique to each region and if you don't search enough, you might miss a weapon or two. Maybe the game should tell you how many weapons there are that you haven't discovered so you can make an informed decision about moving?
I really had fun with HPAWS! It's simple enough and addictive enough, the humor is usually good and the core gameplay loop is interesting. If you love games where you run shops and manage crafting and stuff like that, I'm sure you'll enjoy it!
