Dear Retailers! It is time for yet another update to King of Retail. The primary focus has been on easing the onboarding for new players, and to better explain many of the game's mechanics to those that want to go deep into the micromanagement aspect of the game. So lets get to it.

--- Tutorials ---

Many of you have reported difficulties when starting the game and learning some of the terms and mechanics that exist in the game. Also the existing ones were in much need of an upgrade, as they were outdated. So much has been changed, and replaced with a new system that makes it easier for me to maintain and add new stuff when the need for it arises.

- Business School

At the main menu as well as at the university in campaign mode you can access the business school. Here you find the more explanatory tutorials presented as small courses you can take on various subjects.

- Campaign

Getting into the campaign mode has been a bit confusing for many to find their way around it all, given that the only vague explanations are at the City Hall. These are still there, but now you also have a more bullet point type of tutorial that will assist you along the road, which hopefully will make this experience a lot easier and more understandable.

- In store

The in store tutorial looks almost the same, but it has more tasks now that will bring you more around the store, giving you a better chance to understand what is possible at the store.

- Office

The office tutorial was the last remaining part with looks from the old UI. This has been changed to look like the rest of the game.

--- New Articles ---

Focus in this patch has not been so much on adding content, but we have still managed to add a new pack of shoes to the game. This was a bit underrepresented compared to the rest of the categories in clothing, which is why we decided to complete this category.

--- Logos ---

To the ones that haven't experimented with their own logos, there is now a much bigger selection to choose from when designing your stores, compared to the previous four to select from. Hopefully it will bring some variation to your stores and corporations.

--- Quality of Life ---

As you can see there has not been work on one massive feature alone, but development has been diversified a bit. A part of this was adding many minor changes to existing features and screens,

- Article overlay

This has been updated so you have much more information available when looking at the article. As many has requested it also shows if the article is present at the store, making it easier to find any articles that are only taking up space in storage.

- Set task for all days

You can now set an employee to do one task all week with one button, instead of having to do it individually for each day.

- Options at office

When you press "Escape" at the office, you now have access to the regular menu. Here you can also revisit the office tutorial if that is your desire.

- Minor UI changes

Other than the above many screens have in general received small tweaks here and there. Nothing big and noticeable, but small details that should improve the overall usage. During the next period work on improving existing screens will still continue.

- Bugs

Also some minor bugs have been fixed, and I am very appreciative of bugs you find and report. Even though they are not fixed immediately they all go to my list of things I need to look at, so please continue to report stuff you might find in game.

--- New Art---

With all of these in-game changes, I couldn't leave the game's art behind. We've worked hard with an artist to create this brand new cover art for King of Retail!

--- Whats next? ---

Those were the major changes for this version. And we are already preparing for the next one. It is not fully planned how much it will contain, but I can at least tell some of the things we intend to do.

- Women's clothing

The reason we haven't got that many new articles in this update is because we also have been working on a new category. My super fantastic graphics artist has been spending many hours on making various women's shoes and clothes. There is still work to do on this, as the plan is that it can be playable with a large selection of articles from the next update.

- Options

It might also be the time to expand the in-game options apart from graphics and sound settings. So this will also be added in the next update, and ideas for stuff to add to a "General Options" screen is more then welcome. That was it for this update. As always, feedback, bug reports and ideas are always very welcome. Both here and on the Discord, which you can join here:
I am off to work on the next update. Until next time, happy sales. Cheers Daniel

[ 2021-05-25 13:16:43 CET ] [ Original post ]