Among my highlights during Steam Next Fest a couple of months ago was this chaotic co-op stop-motion-inspired roguelike management game called Clerks & Quirks that had you man a fantasy shop for adventurers while dealing with the many different cursed appliances that make your job a living hell. The core ideas and mechanics of the game, the quirky art style, the depth of its strategy elements, and the many adorable details of the game really hooked me, and overall, I had a blast playing its demo a while back, especially while solo! What is Clerks & Quirks about? As I already mentioned the core gameplay loop is about you manning a fantasy shop, smithing weaponry, brewing potions, and selling your items to various adventurers that have good money to pay for the items you’re offering. As you play the game, you unlock new recipes, upgrade your shop with a variety of pins (introducing bonuses for the current run), and you get to buy new appliances that help you deliver even more items! Some of these appliances, however, are cursed, which causes them to throw the hammer away when you need them or to empty their stored items. Some items will shoot fireballs at you or inconvenience your customers. Due to this, you gotta befriend the cursed appliances through a variety of tasks. Once completed, the cursed appliances will help you out instead, perhaps snatching items customers bought already away from them so that you can resell them… or automatically repairing nearby training dummies. With its many different appliances, recipes, perks and boons, as well as other mechanics, the gameplay gets incredibly chaotic but also a ton of fun can be had, which is why it earned itself a spot in my Steam Next Fest highlights roundup a while back. What’s up with the Playtest? Coming September 7th, a new playtest will be available for the game, introducing brand-new features like new recipes, Endless Mode, 100+ pins, new appliances and quirks, as well as plenty of new chaos! A lot of the game is still rather flexible at this stage, so the developers are very open to feedback and suggestions. It’s a great opportunity to not only see where Clerks & Quirks is heading, but to also help shape what the final experience becomes. Players participating in the playtest will receive an exclusive skin that can be kept after launch! Beyond that, there are also gonna be play sessions with the developers throughout the week, too, that you can join on their Discord server. Go check it out. I love the game a bunch. I’m really hyped for the full release. ALTKEY Games’ devs are also pretty darn lovely. This post was originally published on Indiecator. If you wanna get in touch with me, feel free to stop by for one of my Twitch streams. For business inquiries, please reach out via email.