Hello again, retail kings and customers! We know it's been a while since you heard from us, so we wanted to give you an update on what's been going on in the back of the shop!
We've been busily preparing King of Retail for its full release from Early Access and ...
The grand opening is planned for Q3 2022!
As part of our final preparations, we'll be taking a step back from the regular content updates so that we can put some very important things into place for the full launch. So you might not hear from us for a little bit, but fear not, Retail Regents! We'll soon have more to share about what's to come to your very own storefronts.
Can buy property again
- There was a bug where you couldn't buy property you have rented. This should now be fixed. - A few displays have had their visuals updated - Thieves should not notify you of stolen articles when you captured them
V. 0.17 Released - Do you plan to pay for those?
Dear Retailers
So after a christmas, new years and a bit of time off, we are now back with a new update for you. Let's have a look of what it contains.
--- Thieves ---
First of all, a new feature that many of you have requested for quite along time has been added. Thieves will enter your stores and take your stuff.
Thieves will look very suspicious when taking articles. So if you see a thief hurry to them and kick them out of your store. You can also assign the new "Security" role to your staff, and they will also try and catch thieves.
You can also buy various security alarms to help you catching the thieves.
--- Competitors ---
In campaign mode, competitors will now also arrive to the city, and try to earn money by taking customers away from you. They will open up stores in various areas, and if you are selling the same articles, the battle is on.
Can you survive their impact and run them out of business, or will you be the one suffering too many losses?
These competitors can do marketing campaigns to try and push you even further. But fortunately you can also now do marketing. You can bring attention to your own stores, or directly attack the competitors to push them even further, and try and run their stores out of business.
--- General improvements of campaign mode ---
- Added tutorials to the HQ
The HQ is a very confusing place for new players, and not much help was given in finding your way around it. Now info markers are placed everywhere, so you have a better idea of what possibilities you have in the various areas.
- Various guides
Also many of the actions were kind of hard to set up correctly for a new player, and involved many actions in various areas that allowed for various mistakes.
Some of these has now been changed, such that creating a concept, as well as aquiring a new store has been made simpler.
- More careers
You can also now start a career in a different direction. So instead of joining Armina, you now also go with Electronic Bee and sell electronics instead,
- Other minor improvements
Many other minor improvements has been added to the campaign mode, so it's easier and more intuitive to find your way around.
That is all for this update. I hope you will enjoy the update and the new changes to the game. Reports of bugs and general feedback are most welcome, so don't hesitate to post. You are also very welcome to join the community at our discord channel.
Until next time, have a happy sale. //Daniel
Version 0.16.0 released - How do I look?
Dear Retailers!
It is time for yet another update to King of Retail.
During this past year I have been blessed with having the assistance of my graphics artist who has added and upgraded a lot of things in the game, which have given a great lift to the overall visuals, as well as allowing me to focus more on programming and implementing new features. But as the game gets bigger and bigger, much time goes into managing things that doesn't directly impact the game features themselves. Playtesting, balancing, bug hunting, translation management and so on.
And now I am very pleased to say that another person has joined the team, making it a grand total of 3 people working directly on King of Retail. She will be assisting me in doing many of these tasks, as well as adding new stuff to the game as she also is quite capable with Photoshop. So I am looking much forward to this, and I hope we will be able to make King of Retail even more enjoyable for you to play.
But on to the actual changes. For a long time we have been preparing and designing new characters to bring a much more diverse looking population to the game, instead of having all residents in the city looking all the same. Let us have a look of what have been added.
--- New faces ---
Instead of having 2 faces to choose from, we changed it into a slider system, where you can adjust the facial traits with more detail. You can also freely select hair color, as well as select between more, better looking hair styles.
--- New Outfits ---
Before this update, all customers in your store wore the same clothes. But that is over now, as they have received unique clothings that better fit their individual segment.
--- Staff Uniforms ---
It is also now possible to design your own uniforms for your various stores and concepts. Should your staff have a simple, or an exclusive look. Tailor the outfit to match the look of the rest of your store.
--- Bugs & Small conveniences ---
- Minimum storage system
Many of you have also requested an easier use of the minimum storage system, so now it's possible to add directly to this when ordering an article, making it much easier to setup when starting a new store.
- Keybindings
Keybinds did not save between closing and opening the game, this should be fixed so you don't have to remap the keys every time.
- Color picker
It was time to look at an old and popular request which is a bit over due. But now the color picker has been updated such that you have complete control in selecting the exact color that you want.
--- Up next ---
- New environments
My graphics artist has been done for a while with these new characters as the last work is always implementing the actual things to the game. So she is already making good progress with the next big graphical update, which is new environments.
So soon you will finally have variety in the areas where you manage your stores, and they will better exemplify the area you are in, in the campaign mode. Plus, they look much nicer than the existing area that i could conjure up back in the day.
- Thieves
With the new characters and skills, it's about putting it a bit to use. A very popular request during all of the development period has been thieves in the stores. So i thought i would finally accomodate this request, and allow you to take on the battle with these persons that doesn't want to pay for your hard earned in game articles.
- New careers
When campaign mode was introduced, clothes was the only existing type of article in the game, which is why there only exist these career paths where you sell clothes. So to add to the diversity a bit, we will be working on adding more of these, so this starting phase can vary a bit from time to time.
That was it for this update. As always, I am very interested in listening to new ideas, bug reports and what else you might have to tell.
You are also more than welcome to join our Discord!
Until next time, have a great sale //Daniel
King of Retail 25% Off During Iceberg Interactive Publisher Sale!
Dear Retailers,
It’s that time of year when sales come at you fast, so here’s another one! From now until October 25th, King of Retail is a part of the Iceberg Interactive Publisher Sale. You can grab a ton of great titles at up to 90% off.
King of Retail is available at 25% off for the duration of the publisher sale. If you were still on the fence about buying it, now is the time to jump in, especially with our latest major update!
It has been quite some time since the last update, and I apologize for that. A lot has been changed, i have taken a vacation, and had eye surgery that I needed to recover from. So that is the reason behind the lack of updates in the last period. But now the update is ready, and there has also been made actual work that is ready for the next one, so we have not been sitting idle by.
But let's move on to the actual changes of this update.
--- Staff Overhaul ---
The focus of this update has been on improving many areas of how your staff works. Many of the changes has largely been based on requests from all of you in the community.
- The role designer
Many of you have been annoyed with your staffs efficiency, where they would stand around if there was nothing more to do. This has been changed with a complete overhaul of their job system.
Now instead of them having one task to do, you can now customize their roles, and create as many as you want. This means that you can have one employee go and unpack articles, and after that task is done, to start selling to the customers in the store. Another employee can selling as the primary task, and refill the displays in the meantime. So the control of which tasks, and how they should prioritize them is entirely up to you.
On top of this, you can assign these on an hourly basis. So an employee can be a restocker from 9-12, and be a cashier from 12-17 if that is what you want.
So full control of your staffs tasks in every hour of the day. And for those of you that don't want to go into this level of micromanagement, this system also has the same ease of use as the old one, as you can quicly assign a simple task for the entire day as well.
- The greeter
Thanks to the new system, it is now much easier for me to add new tasks to the game. So one of these additions is the new greeter task.
This finally allows for something many of you have dreamed of for a long, long time. More precisely for you to be able to send your employees outside the store to try and convince the customers to go into the store. So no more standing outside and doing endless conversations to get one more customer into the store.
- New skill system
The old talent system ensured that all staff eventually would be equally good at everything. This gave the feeling of the staff not really having any difference from each other. Instead this has been replaced by a new skill/perk system.
First of all, in this system all staff can do all tasks to begin with. So no more sending them on courses to make them able to stand at the cash register. Instead they have various skill points regarding the various tasks, and learn each skill at various speeds. Yes in time this also means that all staff can become equally good in the end, but it is highly individual when they will reach this point.
And to ensure their individuality, various perks have been introduced. This means that each employee can have a set amount of favorite customer types, favorite article categories and specialized perks that makes this person more unique at a certain area.
So now it can generate higher profits, if you think more about the scheduling and placement of your employees during the day.
- Staff motivation
During the day it has never really been possible to influence your staff directly during the day. Yes, you had the possibility to send them on a break, but nothing more than that. This has also changed.
Now you can go directly to each employee and conduct personal talks with them. Here you can give them an optimistic morale boost, as well as a stern reminder for them to pick up the pace.
This will influence their mood and their new productivity stat they have received. Productivity, combined with familiarity, energy and skill determines how fast they will perform a given task. This will give you a top performance from a happy, productive, well rested worker that has been around for quite some time. So spending time managing your staff in depth can give you an edge which will generate higher profits. Although if this is not your thing, your store should still be able to run rather smooth still.
On top of this you can also see the things that currently affect the mood an productivity of your staff, such that you can react on this.
- New courses
With these changes the old courses was obsolete, and frankly, you needed to send your staff on too many courses in general. So this system changed as well.
When your employee has reached a certain level, you can send the person on a course to gain a new set of perks, chosen by you.
A different type of course, the Booster Course, has also been added. When an employee has been sent on a booster course, their learning is improved by a lot the following week.
--- Woman's Bottoms ---
For the last update a lot of work has gone into adding a women's clothing category. However it was not finished. Now the addition of a new set of items has been added.
This completes this category so far.
--- Bugs and ideas ---
As usual, bugs might be hiding around somewhere after a major update like this, and i will be ready to fix major issues quickly, so don't hesitate to report anything you might find, both here and on our Discord. Also feedback and ideas are as always very welcome.
--- Up next ---
As mentioned we have already prepared at bit for the next update. My graphics artist has been spending a lot of time on upgrading the characters in the game, so the future will bring much better and different characters, customizable uniforms, morphing system for heads, allowing you to customize the face of characters, improved hairstyles and more.
This will hopefully bring the game to a whole new level of graphics.
After this it's time to take a look at the environments of the city, and add more of these, as well as adding more content to the corporation mode in general.
That was it for now. I really hope you will enjoy the new changes to the game. Don't hesitate to join our Discord!
So until next time, happy sales. //Daniel
NEW TRAILER and Demo at Gamescom 2021!
Dear Retailers,
I'm happy to announce that King of Retail is part of Gamescom 2021! This digital event showcases all sorts of amazing games with trailers and demos.
New Trailer!
First, the publisher and I have been working hard to create a new trailer for King of Retail! I think it's a good representation of what the game is like, with some funky music of course.
[previewyoutube="WoAYQq--XjE;full"]
Gamescom Demo
I've also created a short demo to give you a first taste of King of Retail if you haven't already. Do you know anyone who has been on the fence to give the game a shot? Well now they can, free of charge!
The demo is timed, meaning that you can play for 60 minutes. There is no limit to the amount of days you can play within that 60 minute time frame, so depending on your speed you can get a few days of selling under your belt!
The demo will be available for the duration of Gamescom, which lasts until August 27th. If you know anyone who wanted to give King of Retail a try, let them know now.
The last update didn't go as smoothly as i had hoped for, which unfortunately meant that many of your savegames was affected by it. This resulted in multiple stores and corporations going bankrupt. For this i am terribly sorry, as it also means that a lot of playtime that has gone down the drain.
But... i have spent these following days thinking about how i can make it up to you again, and i think i found a solution.
I have uploaded a patch where you can send a mail to your old friend and ask for money. YES - this means that you can now use cheats to get money.
For those of you with affected single store savegames, you can hopefully recover your stores financially, or if this is too late, build a new store that gets you up to speed.
For those of you with corporation savegames, you can here get this money from the store, and transfer it back to your corporation.
Also for quite a while, many of you has requested the possibility of a sandbox type of gameplay. Many of you enjoy a more relaxed game where you can focus on designing interesting stores, instead of having to sell stuff to customers and make sure you have enough money. So this should also allow you to enjoy the game more as you can focus more on what you enjoy doing.
So hopefully this new possibility will make some kind af amends for this slip up. As this has been implemented and added to allow you to get back to the game in a very short time, this is currently the only cheat that is available, but more will of course follow in time.
------------------
How to access it
To access it, you need to do following:
- Go to your computer at the end of the day. - Go to your mails, and then the new option "Write mail". - Here you should write your dear friend "Morten Mousepad" and ask "Gimme money". - Send the mail, and receive your money.
Again, terribly sorry for these problems the past few days, and I sincerely hope that this allows you to get on with your stores, and allow you to enjoy the game again.
So until next time, happy Sales
//Daniel
V. 0.14 available - Ready For Women's Clothing
Dear Retailers!
After a lot of work, we can finally release the next big update, giving you even more stuff to do in the game. Without further ado, let's dive into what's new in this update!
--- Women's clothing ---
So first of all, the biggest change is the introduction of a completely new category. Women's clothing. For now this contains the two sub categories Tops and Shoes, which feature around 200 articles each, so plenty of new things to put into your stores.
These also contain some new types, such as dresses and boots, which can't fit on the regular clothing displays, which means a bunch of new displays have been made. However these work the other way around, so normal shoes also fit on these boots displays, meaning that your existing clothing stores also can use these new displays.
- New displays
The different types of clothing and shoes vary a bit in price range and luxury, meaning that there should be both fast and slow selling articles, which then require various amount of effort to sell.
--- Staff upgrades ---
We've also introduced some new tools for managing your staff.
- Staff zoning
First of all a new zoning system for your staff has been added. With this you can control each person at work, and tell them where they should be working. Maybe you want a team of salespersons close to the computers, and a team of stocking experts near the groceries? This is perfectly possible now. Decide whether your staff should roam free or stay fixed, depending on what makes most sense at your current store.
- Staff notes
It is also possible to write notes to yourself about your staff. Explain how you schedule, or other important stuff for you to remember next time you look at that the person.
--- General options ---
It was also about time to introduce some other general options to the game, as you have requested.
First of all, it is now possible to bind some of the keys in the game. Many of you playing with AZERTY layouts have been complaining that the keys are unintuitive. So now you can set them to your liking.
And an FOV slider has also been added for people playing in wider monitors, as well as a few various mouse settings have been added.
I am very open for ideas to even more options you would like to see implemented.
--- Change of game fundamentals ---
The above are the updates that have made it into the game. And it might not seem as a lot given the time used for this update. However a lot of work has been made to change the base structure of the game. Many of these structures were made when we first started building the game, which also was a time where we didn't know much about building, preparing and managing a project of this size. This means these foundations were not optimal, but instead of dedicating time to change it, new features were built on top instead. But this became more and more of a problem, and some things that are planned in the future would simply not be possible with this, so now it needed to change.
To be specific, is was how all data for articles and staff was setup and handled. So this means that everywhere in the game where the manager, an article or staff was used needed to be changed. And as you can guess this is almost everywhere in the game, so it meant quite a lot to change.
But now it's finally done, and it should mean it will be easier to add new features to the game.
--- Whats next ---
So what will we start working on. Well, my amazing graphics artist has already begun production of bottoms for the women's wear, so that will most likely be ready for the next large update of the game.
I will be adding more flexibility to managing your staff. One of these is to allow you to custom tailor their work, so they can prioritize multiple tasks.
- Should a person fill displays, and then go to the cash register if there is not more to fill? - Should a person unpack deliveries, and then go outside and pull customers in?
This should allow your staff to be more versatile, as well as minimizing down time where they do nothing.
--- Bugs ---
This version has been through a quite lengthy beta period, so hopefully most of the bugs from all of this have been found, but we all know there's bound to be a couple sneaking around out there. So please keep on reporting these, as it is very helpful for me to track them down and remove them. I will be on standby for the next days to remove major ones that might be uncovered.
That was it for this update.
Our Discord is becoming very big with lots of active people on there, and it is very nice to see how helpful you are to each other. It is very appreciated.
You can join it at:
I will head back and create some more content for you to use. Happy sales
//Daniel
Letter to our retailers (13)
Dear Retailers
I thought it was time for a little update. A lot has been changed internally in the game, so an early beta has been released, which this newsletter will focus on.
--- Beta Release ---
- Bug search -
I have been working on changing several core elements of the game. Mainly Staff and Articles, as this was needed to allow for much better mechanincs in the future. So even though it is not visible in game, a lot has changed under the helmet, as articles and staff make up the majority of the game. But changes might mean bugs. So the current beta has been released early so many of these bugs with your help can be found, and give for a good and reliable experience. It can be simple and in unexpected areas so please report everything that behaves in an unusual way. There will be a separate channel for this on the discord.
- Updates and changelog -
Since there is some work to go before a new update, this beta will be out for an extended period. This means it will be updated regularly, and i will keep a changelog on Discord you you can follow what has been changed between each version.
--- New features in the beta ---
- Work Zones -
Before the big change, a much requested feature was added. Mainly that your staff can be assigned different areas to work.
Assign this directly from your hud.
- New Options -
There have been requested several options to solve various things. So mouse sensitivity, inverted mouse axis, and FoV change for people with wide screens,
- Keybinds -
Players with AZERTY keyboards also had difficulties playing. So keybinding is also now possible to do.
--- Not added ---
I have explained that we are making womans clothing to be added. These are still being prepared. Many articles has been created, but we are still adding more. So a bit of work and setup still needs to be done before they can be fully added to the game.
But i can still share some images of what have been done so far.
So this was a little update for now. I would like to thank you in advance for all the help in finding these bugs. It is much appreciated, and make my job much easier in trying to give you a good game.
