A beginners' guide to Kairosoft's management build-'em-up Mega Mall Story

Kairosoft, the developer behind highly addictive iPhone titles Game Dev Story and Hot Springs Story, has moved into the retail business.

Mega Mall Story sees you build and manage a new up-and-coming mall, fill it with shops and facilities, give money for local developments, and advertise your way to success.

If you've played a Kairosoft title before you'll know this isn't easy, so we've put this little guide together for you.

It covers your stores and how to improve them, your customers and how to attract them, and a couple of other important bits of information.

The mall isn't going to open itself, so let's get going.

The Basics

Mega Mall Story gives you 15 in-game years to produce a bustling five-star mall.

Keep this, and the fact that a month passes in a mere two minutes, in your mind as you play.

The rank of your mall is dependent on your amount of monthly sales revenue and your number of regular customers, so it's important to keep some focus on increasing these.

As you increase in rank you'll be given access to new employees and better methods of advertising, meaning - theoretically - that you'll pull in more punters.

You can fill your mall with both stores and facilities. The former bring in revenue, naturally, and the latter gift you hearts every time they're used.

Hearts are needed to buy plans for new outlets, and to add new services to pre-existing shops.

Stores

As you can imagine, stores are your big money-makers in Mega Mall Story.

As the saying goes, though, you have to spend money to make money, and each store will cost you a hefty sum to build.

Once built, your stores can be levelled-up, which increases their sale prices and reputation, and gives you bonus points to assign to both stock levels and the quality of the stores.

Although stock levels are obviously important if you want to make money, the quality of a store is the most important factor if you wish to attract regular customers.

Regular customers spend more money than your average punter, can gift large amounts of money, count towards your mall's overall ranking, and can even give you plans for new stores. It's wise to keep these in mind.

Remember: Increasing a store's stats also increases its maintenance cost, so don't go overboard. Be sure that you can cover the new costs or you'll end up in a sticky situation.

Finally, you can get a store bonus - which improves price and reputation - by building certain stores next to each other in one unbroken line.

You can either buy these combos from the travelling salesman who will randomly pop-up in your mall or check out some of them in this handy list below.

We found this list on the KairoSpot forums.

Kids: Toy Disp, Candy Store, Vending Machine
Neighbors: Butcher, Greengrocer, Seafood Store
Crowd: Chinese Buffet, Rest Area, Bookstore
Girls: Florist, Cake Shop, Clothing Store
Snacks: Fast Food, Chinese Buffet, Cafeteria
Breakfast: Bakery, Leafy Plant, Cafe
Toys: Toy Disp, Toy Store, Game Store
Convenience: Convenience Store, Dollar Store, Drugstore
Electronics: PC Store, Appliances, Mobile Shop

Facilities

Facilities produce hearts when customers use them, which can be spent improving your overall mall and the stores within it.

For example, spending a number of hearts to add a new service to a store that suffers from slow sales, should give you a small boost to the number of customers you see.

They are also needed to host sales, which pull in the punters in droves, and are a great way to level-up your shops.

Reach a popularity of 100 - through advertising - and you'll enter Fever mode. Your mall will be swarmed by customers, and each will provide a heart.

Remember: If you build a new floor on your mall, you have to also build stairs so your customers can reach it.

From time to you'll be approached about providing an investment for a local cause.

You should always accept - providing you have the cash - as this will lead to more customers.

Place your high-rep stores on the upper floors of your mall, and place low-rep stores nearby them. This should should help you level them up.