Winkeltje: The Little Shop News

[p]Hello once again dear shopkeepers.

We are thrilled to announce that you can now play Faire Trade. A new shopkeeping experience that has been built from the ground up to give way to exciting new features.[/p][p]
Faire Trade Early Access Launch Trailer[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]You can read read up on some of the changes that are coming in our last post here:
[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]Or you can check out the new post on the Faire Trade community here:
[dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]

Either way. Today is an exciting day that marks the grand opening of Faire Trade where we look forward to continue development in trying to build the best shopkeeping experience imaginable. With the ability to now mod the game, the sky could truly be the limit.

We hope to see you in the Faire Trade community on Steam as development updates will be posted there.

See you soon![/p]

[p]Hello Shopkeepers,

It has been a while since we last shared an update about the future of Winkeltje: The Little Shop. As you may already know, Winkeltje has been in maintenance mode for a while now. The game launched it's 1.0 version in April 2022 and since received several updates including a Cat Companion DLC and a big and risky Pathfinding Update in February 2024. Since then, we realized that if we wanted to go bigger, better, and bolder than Winkeltje, we had to go back to the drawing board to improve on things. [/p][p][/p][p]This brings us to Faire Trade, which in many ways aims to become Winkeltje 2.0 but with a brand new name that will hopefully communicate better what the game is about at face value.

Faire Trade has been in development for some time now and here are some its main features that we are excited to share with you:[/p]

• [p]The ability to leave the shop and go into town![/p]
• [p]A farm plot to cultivate your crops.[/p]
• [p]A home plot to sleep in.[/p]
• [p]All your plots can be built and decorated to fit your style.[/p]
• [p]New products like Pottery, Armaments, and Swindle goods.[/p]
• [p]A farming rework to support trees and perennials.[/p]
• [p]New weapon and armor display stands.[/p]
• [p]Mod support!!![/p]
• [p]A dynamic market where trade affects product values.[/p]
• [p]Graphics overhaul for richer visuals.[/p]
• [p]And a lot more...[/p]

[p][/p][p]Like with Winkeltje. We invite you to join the development of Faire Trade and with your feedback and input, help shape its future. If that excites you, then we want to invite you to wishlist Faire Trade to be notified of updates and when it launches into Steam Early Access next week on October 16th.

We have also just posted an FAQ on the Faire Trade Community that might have an answer to a question that you may have about Faire Trade.[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]Future updates to Faire Trade will mostly be shared on the Faire Trade Steam Community or if you want to have a chat with us, then you can also find us on Discord.

See you around Shopkeeper!

[/p][h3]Patch Notes:[/h3][p]
We have updated the game to version 14617.[/p]

• [p]Fixed an issue in the tutorial where you could not order products from the counter if you didn't buy any from the trader to continue the tutorial.[/p]

[p]Good morning Shopkeepers![/p][p][/p][p]A few hours ago Unity informed its users that a security vulnerability has been found in the engine (going back to 2017). They released a patch for it and as such we immediately applied it to the game. After some testing on our side it seems all good to go. I've just deployed it to Steam, and I encourage you to update the game (and any other Unity game that you have installed) as soon as possible.[/p][p][/p][p]There is no evidence that this vulnerability was ever exploited, but we did want to get this fix out as soon as possible. If you want to read more details on it, you can find those here: https://discussions.unity.com/t/unity-platform-protection-take-immediate-action-to-protect-your-games-and-apps/1688031[/p][p][/p][p]I will also take this opportunity to mention that the sequel to Winkeltje, Faire Trade, is coming out October 16th, and you can wishlist it now! [/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p]

[p]We've deployed a small patch that should fix the issue where you can get stuck outside of the shop. The intended solution is that the game will try to teleport you back at the entrance.[/p][p][/p][p]If you haven't done so already, make sure to wishlist our next game: Faire Trade![/p][p][/p][h2]Patch Notes[/h2]

• [p]Fixed issue where the game wouldn't teleport the player back inside the bounds of the shop as intended[/p]

Greetings Shopkeepers!

We have some very exciting news to share with you. Winkeltje is getting a sequel called Faire Trade aimed to launch later this year!



Winkeltje was our first venture into the shopkeeping genre and we have learned a tremendous amount from it. Many of these lessons could not be retroactively applied to Winkeltje and so it made a lot of sense to the team to start working on a sequel that will eventually go beyond the experience that Winkeltje has achieved thus far.

Faire Trade

Faire Trade is a shopkeeping simulation game that builds on its predecessor on a rebuilt foundation with much greater aspirations. It contains essential features such as buying low and selling high, customers, shop building, furnishing, decorating, crafting, farming, and a lot more. In addition, exciting new features will be introduced during early access as the game develops, based on feedback from our community.

https://youtu.be/oxo8N7mnYuA

Let’s start with the obvious, why change the name from Winkeltje to Faire Trade?

When listing all of the things that we wanted to improve in Winkeltje, the name very often came up as something that could be better considering its international audience.

Winkeltje as a game name is still dear to our hearts as developers with Dutch roots. But we also realize that ‘Winkeltje’ does not have much meaning outside of a Dutch audience so we wanted to update this to broaden the game's appeal to our global community, now spanning 16 languages.

Rebuilt from the ground up

Many of the other things we wanted to improve came down to foundational architectural choices that are incredibly time consuming and risky to change in an existing game. Given that the team was inexperienced in the relatively young shopkeeping genre, we had underestimated the interest and wishes from the community for us to continue to build and expand on the shopkeeping simulation experience. This meant that we had often implemented solutions that would ultimately limit the scope the community wanted us to reach.

We have succeeded in improving on foundational Winkeltje systems, such as pathfinding, but this turned out to be an incredibly monumental task in a game that in development was effectively treated as live service across multiple platforms.

Improving on things for Winkeltje like modding support, materials and lighting, and button remapping, turned out to be such foundational changes across multiple platforms and languages that it would change and destabilize the game to such a degree that it was a better choice for us to leave Winkeltje at its peak and try to surpass it in a new and better game.

What can you expect?

• Content
  In Faire Trade, models have been changed at a fundamental level to allow for faster creation, better performance, and more color variety. This overhaul required pretty much all existing Winkeltje content to be revisited and updated to reap the benefits of this new standard. The amount of content has more than doubled compared to Winkeltje.
  
• Gameplay
  Faire Trade has more complex mechanics with new ways of crafting, farming has gotten a significant upgrade, and there’s a dynamic economy running in the background to keep things interesting. In addition to this, we are working on enjoyable new side activities to complement your life as a shopkeeper.
  
• Mods
  Modding support was also a frequently recurring request from the Winkeltje community. Faire Trade has been built from the ground up with modding support in mind, making almost everything moddable. You will be able to add new content, modify existing content, add new art, or even build new features. Together with you, we very much look forward to exploring the exciting new possibilities that mods can bring to Faire Trade.
  
• Life outside the shop
  Faire Trade now has a village to explore! You can visit the tavern, unlock new decorations in the Guild Hall, talk to locals or buy new color variations from the local artist.
  
• Much, much more..
  Faire Trade opens up an exciting and overwhelming amount of possibilities and there is a lot more in the works that is currently too early to show. There is an invigorating challenge ahead to reimplement many Winkeltje features the way you loved them and strive to add a lot more exciting ones that we know you will grow to care for.
  

If you are as excited to play Faire Trade and help shape the future of shopkeeping simulation then we invite you to join our Discord to learn more.

The best way that you can support us right now is to wishlist Faire Trade here to stay up to date on developments on Steam.

That’s all for today, we hope that you will join us for another adventure!