Saleblazers fuses first person survival and shopkeeping genres into a glorious mashup

Saleblazers is a survival shopkeeping game created by Airstrafe Interactive, an independent game studio founded in 2019. Now of course, as you may have realised, a genre mix of survival and shopkeeping is certainly a new concept, and a bold one at that.

However, bold as it may be, it surely is a combination that works well together and creates an interesting choice straight off the bat for you. Do you want to stay and run a basic shop and progress in your shopkeeping skill? Or does exploration and the chance to encounter new enemies appeal more? This is one of the first decisions you will make in Saleblazers and both come with their own incentives.

While setting up shop may appeal more to players who are looking for a quieter experience, the money that can be made at the start of the game is minimal, and eventually you will find yourself needing to expand your stock and venture out further to get new materials to craft with. However, levelling up your shopkeeping experience will lead to greater profit in the future, and provide more money for you to research products with. By choosing to go down the exploration path, you may find yourself at the mercy of enemies who take no shame in sneaking up behind you and laying down the hurt. But with the promise of a variety of loot and more valuable products to be obtained, you may find that it’s a risk worth taking.

One aspect that Saleblazers excels at is by ensuring that any kind of player can find something in the game they enjoy. From levelling up different skills, or buying perks helpful in combat, you’ll find that whichever path you choose to take in this game, it will be unique to you. This is even evident in what kind of shop you’ll run! Within Saleblazers you can sell anything and everything, whether it be food, drink, fish, crops, animal loot, clothing, furniture, there’s so much variety in the products available. Another strong point is the variety of decor options available in the game. With a strong selection of differing wallpapers and flooring options, and multiple furniture styles, creating a store that fits your preferences is only a few clicks away!

Whilst playing through Saleblazers, one part that really stood out to me was the music within it. The music on the opening screen really helps give the sense of adventure that awaits you. The choice of song really is perfect for helping you get into the mood, and honestly. you may even find yourself wanting to listen to the song outside of playing the game!

Even whilst in the game world, the atmospheric music really helps to set the scene, with the sound effects at night-time really driving home the fact that you’re in the wild. The visual quality of the game is also impressive in some aspects. I really loved the style and the design of the game as it’s got very anime-like features, with your character and NPCs having big eyes and small facial features, however I do think that some aspects of character design could use a revisit later down the line. Most notably with hair textures appearing stretched on longer hairstyles.

Unfortunately, as Saleblazers is currently in Early Access, there are quite a few technical issues within the game. Whilst playing through the game myself, I noticed that game crashes were all too common. The most notable instance of this happening was during the tutorial where the game can’t save. I had almost finished the tutorial stages when the game crashed and I was forced to restart it from the beginning. The lack of smoothness around the edges on some objects was almost noticeable and was a little frustrating at times, however this is a fairly minor issue.

Lastly, I did find that in the opening stages of the game, gameplay can be a little repetitive as you’re finding your footing with the shop-keeping aspect. In order to improve your store and unlock different pieces of furniture and equipment, you are required to donate your earnings to the research board. This can lead to a repetitive cycle of just solely focusing on making as much money as possible in order to unlock various aspects of the game, such as fishing, gardening and cooking.

However, with such a large variety of research and with the ability to level up your skills, this does mean that Saleblazers has a lot of replay value. Although to begin with it may be repetitive, later on down the line when you unlock the ability to hire employees and you’ve unlocked a variety of equipment, you will find that you’re more free to explore a larger portion of the game and enjoy the freedom that Saleblazers provides.

Overall, I believe that Saleblazers is a fun game that, although has its problems, most certainly has a lot of potential. If you can get past the poor optimisation and see the game for what it has to offer currently, and will do in the future, I fully believe that you’ll have a blast playing this game.

Saleblazers is available now for Windows PC and Mac.