Counter: Dungeon Shop Keeper

Heroes come out of the hole with things they do not understand and rent due on Tuesday. You have a set of scales and no scruples.

Counter is a dungeon shop game about the part nobody else simulates: naming the number. Buy low from people who cannot wait. Sell high to people who cannot count. Shutters up to shutters down is two or three minutes.

THE HAGGLE, CAPPED AT THREE
They say a number first, and it is never their best one. Counter it, hold where you are, or walk. Three exchanges and they go. There is no fourth, no upgrade that buys one and no video that unlocks one. That cap is the whole design: a haggle that ends before it gets boring.

NOTHING EVER TELLS YOU WHAT A THING IS WORTH
Not the shelf, not the ledger, not the sale afterwards. You get the scales, which separate heavy from ordinary and say nothing else. You get whatever the seller claims, and the seller is usually wrong, at length, with confidence.
"It only works on Thursdays, and I have not tested that."

STOCK GOES STALE
What you take in today is what you can move on tomorrow. Jars, crates, blades, lamps, banners, signposts and things nobody has a word for. A shelf full of the wrong thing is a shelf you already paid for.

CLOSE UP
The ledger writes itself: what came in, what went out, what is still sitting there, and the rent. Rent is due whether the day went well or not.

WHAT IS IN IT
- Five or six customers a day, each selling or buying
- A three-exchange cap that nothing in the game raises
- Scales that tell you light from heavy and refuse to say more
- Named items somebody swears are special, and a merchant's reasons
- Four shop upgrades: another shelf, better scales, a sign, a lamp
- Twenty-one goals to work through
- Three things nobody is told about
- English and Korean, both written rather than translated

NO NONSENSE
No energy bar. No timers between days. No waiting to play. Open the shutters, work the counter, close up, stop. It saves where you left off.

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