The Tick Tock Chop Shop

Built for Wasteland Weekend 2023, the chop shop is the mercantile front for my character, Ticker, who uses it as a base to barter time pieces and spread the lore of the Guild of Tickers.

The Chop Shop was featured on the People Make Games youtube channel when they stopped by to barter on their quest to become faceless merchants.

The Lore & Design

At my first Wasteland I chose a clock theme to build my character around. The lore behind their profession was that caravans crossing a featureless desert wasteland could not rely on landmarks to find their way. This is similar to the problems sailing ships encounter out on the ocean. Ships clocks were developed to help these ships navigate and I reasoned that a crafts person who could maintain working clocks in the harsh desert environment would be extremely valuable to the trade caravans that traveled across the wastes.

I took a maximalist approach to designing the shop with layers of goods worn with rust and age. Time pieces of all shapes and sizes hung from rusted metal grids. Bits of junk were assembled into hanging ornaments that gave moment to the store when the desert breezes would blow through.