Winkeltje is an amazing shop simulator game that I enjoyed a lot. This would be in my top 10 indie games if I wasn’t an achievement hunter, but it has one achievement that takes way too long. ~35h to 100%
Approximate amount of time to 100%: Around 35 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1, but I think 2 might be the better option
Is there a good guide available: You don’t need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, you need to play on the bigger map to be able to expand your shop 200 tiles and for another achievement you need to complete the game very hard. I would do those challenges on different saves
Grinding Achievements: YES, buying 200 tiles is a real grind in my opinion. Having all the crafting stations at the max level within one save file is easier and shorter, but also will take a while, gladly you can combine those two
DLC-Only achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
Winkeltje is an amazing shop simulator game from a Dutch developer, it literally means “Little Shop” in Dutch, which is my main language. I enjoy this game a lot and my first play session was 8 hours long but it only felt like 2. My real-life day flew by, I had no idea that I was already playing for so long, I enjoy the game that much as I was busy improving my shop every single in-game day and paying off my loan, which is essentially the goal of the game.
Winkeltje has multiple difficulty levels and some relaxing settings, where money doesn’t matter. There are 4 achievements for those 4 different difficulties, if you beat the game on a higher difficulty, you’ll get the ones that are lower as well.
I played first on “Normal” And after I had won that difficulty, I opted for trying the “Extra hard,” one, this way, I’ve only had 2 playthroughs of the game but still had the time to learn how to play, while not playing on the highest difficulty from the beginning. Later I went back to my first shop to work on the achievements to have all crafting stations on the max level within one save file and expand my store with 200 land tiles.
A general tip, which isn’t so clear in-game but is still VERY important, is that you can specialize your shop. That way customers coming to your shop know what you’ll have in stock and will not keep asking for other weird stuff. The customers have a memory of 5 days, from what was on your shelves when first opened the shop. I would highly suggest looking up all the specializations in the menu, before buying your first items on day one and then deciding what kind of shop you’ll be, which will aid you to increase the profit right from the beginning. With that specialization also comes a matching crafting skill, where you can choose from a variety of different ones like; tailoring, cooking, smithing or alchemy.
It is very important to get the appeal of your shop as high as possible, as this will affect how many customers your shop will have and that will increase the profit.
My love for this game faded a lot at the end. I really think this is an amazing game and I loved to come back to it to finish up all the achievements that got added during early access, but the achievement for expanding your store with 200 tiles went way too far, especially because the tiles get so expensive. This is purely an achievement hunter problem and people that don’t care about the achievements will not struggle with this, but my last 10 hours were so boring when I just had to stock up my shop, open the store and wait till the day ended, just to keep making as much profit as possible. And that it is already a blessing you can hire staff who will put the items on shelves when customers buy stuff, otherwise I wouldn’t even attempt to try to get this achievement. I managed to work on this achievement while watching other things on my phone, you can’t do that on the same computer because the game will pause when it isn’t the active screen. And even while watching youtube, I quit for a while because it was just so boring and I wasn’t even close to earning that achievement. I managed to get it in the end, but it really sucks if the last achievement is such a big grind that seems to go on endlessly.
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This review for Winkeltje: The Little Shop was written on 4 June 2022, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 24 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.
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