“I couldn’t write a normal game” – how quirky shopkeeper game Discounty took over the indie market

In the summer of 2025, we had an excellent selection of cozy games to choose from, including Discounty, which was a highlight for those of us who like to stick our shopkeeper hats on from time to time. I got the chance to catch up with its game director and writer, Anne Elser, and artist and game designer, Magnus Wahlers, who both serve as co-founders of Crinkle Cut Games.

Elser, Wahlers, and I got to chat about the reception to the game, as well as how a small university project sold 50,000 copies in the first few days. We also touch on inspiration, our favorite characters, political humor, and the Switch and mobile ports. Let’s get into it.

I’m keen to know how the excellent reception to the game compares to their early expectations. Discounty’s humble origins began as a university thesis project, but after some timely backup from cultural funding programmes in Denmark, Crinkle Cut’s country of origin, the game took off. Elser says that it was a total surprise. “We were thinking at some point, like, ‘wow, imagine if we could make a game that sells 50,000 copies – that would be incredible’, and then obviously we did that in a couple of days, which was really wild”.

The two of them beam with pride over the video call, and I feel compelled to congratulate them on the wild success of their very first game. Discounty has all the polish of a game made by a much more experienced team, and with the People or Profit expansion, it feels really complete and rounded off in a way that not many indie game developers get to experience. “We feel so privileged and so happy that people connected with the game that we made and that we were able to sell them on that fantasy of running a little shop that we had ourselves”, Elser says.

Discounty had an extensive rollout over several platforms, and has been successful on all, so it’s clear that people love the game. Given that it wasn’t always intended for mobile and Nintendo Switch, it’s pretty lucky that the format works so well. “It wasn’t always the plan, but it was the dream”, Elser says. It’s also been “pivotal” to Discounty’s success, as Switch sales are just behind those on Steam. As a big Nintendo fan, it’s her dream to get a game into a Nintendo Direct – I reckon she’s in with a good shot next time.

We get into People or Profit in the Discounty expansion in a later interview, but for now I’m hoping to get some insight on the approach to the game more generally. With such a distinct aesthetic to appreciate, I ask about Discounty’s unique art style. I’m very surprised by Wahler’s answer. “I think to begin with, I wasn’t an artist at all. So I just picked it up because we needed someone to do it”, he says. Naturally, he looked to similar games for inspiration. When it comes to making it stand out a fresh layer was added to give the game a unique style. “That’s why the decision of adding more realistic lighting and post-processing effects and stuff like that came into play. We also wanted it to feel maybe a bit grander”.

Elser adds that they wanted to draw in the right crowd with both the gameplay and design, hoping to stand out. “A lot of people that are not familiar with cozy games will look at it and be like, it’s just another Stardew Valley game. But we know that our people [cozy gamers] can tell the difference”.

It’s not just the art style that stands out, though. Discounty has great writing, including a strange cast of characters who keep you on your toes as you progress – surprising, charming, and sometimes shouting at you. Some players have criticized the characters for being mean to the player, but the team appears to have a different perspective. “We know them in a different way”, Elser says, “there is something about spending that much time with them that makes you love them more.”

The mayor of the town, Elmer, is both Wahlers’ and Elser’s favorite character. Wahlers says that it’s because Elser put a lot of herself into the mayor, while Elser herself says, “I love incompetent characters”. She also wants to see more evil characters in games like Discounty, saying that Tammy is a lot of fun. “I think that something that has been lost a little bit with cozy games are cartoonishly evil people – I love them […] I realized that if you fail her quest, she yells at you […] some people feel that it’s quite mean, but to me, it’s not that deep”.

Tammy definitely brings melodrama to the town – one that, in my book, is so silly it’s almost the game poking fun of itself. Discounty’s incredible humor is a huge part of its charm, despite the seriousness of some of the topics it addresses, including the tackling of capitalist destruction and the consequences of your actions on your surroundings. How do you approach something like that, where the writing has to have some humor to balance out the seriousness? I’m curious to know.

Elser, as the game’s writer, takes the lead here. “The game… reflects me a lot. I’ve read a review that was like, ‘this game is profoundly awkward’, and I am also profoundly awkward, and I think I couldn’t write a normal game”. In case you couldn’t already tell, I agree with her that Discounty isn’t a normal game – in the best way possible. I love its quirky charm. Elser goes on to add, “I love politics, and I love humor. So it just combined very naturally for me… we could deal with these difficult topics, but then we could throw in a joke immediately afterwards”.

She highlights an example of one of these implementations. “We have that quest where you have to paint the sheep, because we wanted to point out the hypocrisy of [the fact that] you don’t mind that you have ground beef in your shop, because it’s a nameless cow or whatever, but once it’s a named sheep called Fluffles, then it’s really wrong to kill it”. She describes this as a “messy implementation of such a grand topic” but I disagree. I think Discounty handles it in a very considered way. After all, if you preach too hard, or make players work hard to care, they won’t want to play anymore, a fact that the team seems hyper aware of.

“People love writing games, but not so many players like reading games”, Elser says about how Discounty’s format lends itself to its narrative and message. Experience comes into play again here, though. “The more inexperienced you are as a writer, the more writing you want to do, because you want to explain everything and you want everything to kind of add up and make sense. And it’s really difficult to do it well”.

With little experience under their own belts, Crinkle Cut turned to other games for inspiration, including games like Stardew Valley. Elser’s assessment of the ConcernedApe game is that dialogue is impactful only because it appears sporadically. How do you approach that in such a narrative-heavy game? Well, try to keep it to an absolute need-to-read basis. Wahlers says, “It’s something we played a lot around with as well, with different systems of [dialogue]. Should we take it completely away from the player or is it mandatory? Does it happen automatically? Or should you walk up to someone, speak with them, and suddenly a cut scene appears? I think we [tried] like 10 different ways of that.”

Elser says something that seems like she’d probably do it differently next time, adding, “For our next game, it’s something we want to tone down a little bit to try to make it more focused. If we want to interrupt the player… it should be really meaningful and a really important moment”. Although a new game is clearly on their minds now that the extra Discounty content is out, if it exists in any way yet, it’s in its early stages.

For now, you can get Discounty on the Nintendo eShop or Steam, and it’s coming to iOS and Android soon enough. It comes with the People or Profit expansion included, so it’s time to get to work. Also, whether you love or hate Tammy, you can chat with us about it on the Pocket Tactics Discord server.