The idea is interesting, for a Tycoon type of game.
I will be a bit critical, but trying to provide useful feedback, so I will apologise beforehand.
The Character art is Great! Kudos for that!
The shelve design though, it breaks a bit the immersion. Some shadows would have helped to give them some depth.
Level Design is Ok, if we are trying to mimic a real shop, however given that the NPCs never interact with the shelves it is kind of cumbersome. It would have been more interesting to have the Shelves behind the counter, so that you actually get some use of the counter, and not spend all the time next to the clients fetching their tapes.
Balancing seems a bit off, but it could be great with a bit of tweaking. The main issue is if you get 2 TVs and the Sneakers you are basically out of business, since there are not enough clients.
Minor improvement suggestions:
The clients should leave once they have no more tapes to give you.
Did you consider making them get angry if they wait for too long? Or giving you a tip if they didn't wait much time?
It is also missing an End Goal, like winning the Golden VHS or something for rewinding 100 tapes.
Overall: Good enough for a casual game on Mobile with a few more tweaks.
Keep up the good work!
Viewing post in Lackluster Video Store comments
The character art was bought then edited by me so I can't take credit for that one, this project is the most pixel art I've ever done so fully expected some comments on it being pretty awful, all I can do is try to improve over time.
"Did you consider making them get angry if they wait for too long? Or giving you a tip if they didn't wait much time?"
I considered exactly that! but I was finished with the game 1.5 hours before submission and have slept less than 5 hours every night since the jam started so I had to call it a day somewhere unfortunately.
Having a video storage area behind the counter rather than a dead store front would have made much more sense actually, wish I had thought of this.
'The main issue is if you get 2 TVs and the Sneakers you are basically out of business, since there are not enough clients.' that just comes down to the RNG , its all done based on random generator rather than weighted probabilities etc so that I could get it done in the time frame.
Glad that you had some of the same ideas.
If the RNG would only be weighted based on your currently purchased upgrades, that would make a huge difference.
I hope to see a next version of this, since the idea is pretty interesting.
I am sure you learned a lot during this Jam (as I did) and maybe even had some fun with some weird mechanical bug (as it usually happens in this field) and are ready to take on bigger challenges!
Take care, and I hope I gave you some ideas and/ or honest Feedback on your project.