Recettear Localiser Talks Digital Distribution as Sales Pass 100k, Next Project Revealed

The event of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale's sales passing 100,000 units has led the Japanese PC RPG's localiser Carpe Fulgur to give a little insight into the world of digital distribution. Carpe Fulgur further revealed that Chantelise, also by Recettear developer EasyGameStation, will be the next game it brings Westward.

Recettear and Chantelise.

While 100,00 is certainly a nice, big number, Carpe Fulgur founder Andrew Dice explains that "the majority of the game's sales so far have been at a sale price," including "a heck of a lot of units" in a bundle during the Steam Thanksgiving sale. The lion's share of profits also went to developer EasyGameStation. While the bundle sale meant less money per unit, Dice notes that "we still made more money than we did during October." Clearly, the Steam mega-sale model can work well for developers.

Lest he be misunderstood as complaining, Dice later clarified that no digital distributors "forced our hand" on sales. In case you hadn't got the message yet, he made it quite clear--"Let me put it this way: we made way more money with the discount promotions than we would have without them." Dice also revealed that Recettear's sales can fund over a whole year of salaries for Carpe Fulgur, and the company had planned to continue if Recettear had only sold a quarter as well as it has.

Recettear's strong sales performance might also allow Carpe Fulgur to create English voices for the game, Dice explained.

We are literally right on the line money-wise I'd set for us months ago between being comfortable with doing an English voice set for the game and not. The big trick is that we need to be able to throw at least $10,000-15,000 to really do it with the quality I'd want any English voicework to be. This is very much a 'we either do it really well or we don't do it at all' deal; I've seen enough feedback about janky English VO over the years to know that it can really ding a publisher's reputation, so I'm determined to do English VO right if we do it at all.

There's no word yet on when Chantelise is coming, merely that it's on its way. If you're out of touch with the world of Japanese indie games from 2006, Hardcore Gaming 101 has a bit of a primer for the game. There's also a demo on the official site, if your Japanese is up to scratch.

Recettear scored a pair of 'honorable mentions' in the final round of the 2011 Independent Games Festival, it was revealed yesterday.