Dear retailers!
A new month has passed by, meaning it is time to give a new update of the world of King of Retail. Things are still progressing at a steady pace, with many new things happening this month as well.

--- Contest winners ---

We had another contest this month, and the topic was making the best electronics store in the original King of Retail. Our winners of this month are:

On 1st. place: Fried Circuits by thatonegirlsparks

On 2nd. place: Fusion Tech by letsi

On 3nd. place: Nextron by lenian

It was very fun to see the versatility of the old poster system being put to good use again, as well as just getting to see some well made stores in the original King of Retail. Since all my focus is on the new game, it is rare i get to see the old game. A nice feeling of nostalgia for me, as well as a good reminder of the roots of the new game.

Thanks a lot for all of your submissions, it never becomes boring watching your submissions and your great stores.

--- This months contest ---

This month we will be returning to King of Retail 2.
We were wondering how the future of supermarkets will look like. Nut just in the near future, but very far away. Once humankind has colonised the moon, they will still need to buy their futuristic food.
We assume stores never gets old, and home deliveries is merely a passing thing, so to prepare, we will need you to design:

An extraplanetary Supermarket

This month we will look at the following:
- They will need to have access to lots of variation, so a lot of variety in the assortment will be valued high.
- In a future of lights and led, we imagine lots of lights everywhere. Be creative with the display designer. It should still be pleasant to shop in, so a good balance of futuristic lights and regular interior is very optimal.

Good luck and have fun :)

--- New UI designer ---

King of Retail is a very UI heavy game.
Up until now i have been doing all that design on my own. And there are varied opinions on the quality of my skills, which i am fully aware of. :D It is a hard to learn, but an area of game productions that is very important to get right.
So for some time i have been looking to find a UI designer to help with that part of the game.
I have talked with a lot, tried a few, and finally found one who does very promising work, and who also is a pleasure to work with as well.

He will over time overhaul the entire UI, and of course help with future screens as well.
Over the last month we have been compiling a general theme i tried it out on different screens, and here are some of the results:

I personally feel it is a great improvement.
It gives the game a more modern look, without being boring, while the layouts will make things easier to use, and look more organised to look at.

I am really looking forward to when all the game looks like this, and hope you are as well.

--- Marketing (The real version) ---

Another task i have undertaken this month is to start looking for a marketing agency.
As you now, we have chosen to handle the game 100% by ourselves, and work without publishing agencies.
That means more tasks on our hand, and one of these is to do some proper advertising for the game.

The launch into early access is VERY important to the future of any game. And since King of Retail started as a university project, we did MANY things wrong on the launch of that game. I can reveal on the big launch day, we sold around 5 copies, and it only when down from there. Luckily we didn't have high expectations, and always planned to keep on working no matter how it went.

The initial success of the game can purely be attributed to the streamer "Paluten", who was the first streamer to put it on the map by playing the game and affecting the sales after launch. Without him putting it on the map, Without him, it was not guaranteed that King of Retail and King of Retail 2 would have made it to this point.
So basically we were very lucky with the first game. I of course hope he also played it that much because it was a good game, attributing a part of it to the success.

This time around i try to learn from my experience, and do a proper launch, so the luck is more in our own hands.
But marketing isn't easy and we only have one shot for getting a proper launch next year.

We have taken some courses to learn the fundamentals, but came to the conclusion that doing this ourselves, going through the learning curve and do the mistakes that comes with it maybe isn't the best solution on the one chance we have with the game.

So instead we think it is better to leave this to people who do it for a living. That also frees up a lot of my time to do the things i am good at, which is working on the actual game itself.

It will be interesting to see what happens off of this, and hopefully give King of Retail 2 the best terms to make the best game possibly for you to enjoy :)

--- Expansion and building ---

Despite the time usage on all the things above, i have of course still managed to work on the actual game itself. I started to work on the possibility of buying more property and expanding a store.

For that i improved sequence that happens when you acquire new property. This might be a bit redundant when the UI will be changed at some point anyway, but until that point we still need something that works properly for you to use.

But this new change mean you can now buy the completely empty land plots on the map, and either build a store there, or connect it to an adjacent store. So finally you can spend your hard earned money on making your stores bigger. And currently there are to limits to the size of the store, so those of you who want to do that, can go crazy.

The above is however mostly menu interactions as it is just plot management. You also need to be able to actually change your store. This is where the new "Build Mode" comes in, and during your evenings you now have the possibility to switch between Store and Build mode.

For now i am making good progress with the first part where you can build the outer structure. You can place walls one by one and shape the actual building itself. You can create overhangs, tunnels, walkways, insets, multiple floors and many other things. I try to keep it as free as possible to not limit your creativity when constructing the building.

When you have the shape of the building, you can freely customise the elements in the walls.
Scale windows to the shape and size as you want, and then place it wherever you want in the wall. Entrances are not limited to one pr. building, so make multiple entrances and exits, to guide your customers more in their shopping.

Painting has also been moved to this mode, and you can now paint both inner and outer walls, as well as all elements in them..

Already as this unfinished point you have the ability to create truly unique buildings, so i am really looking forward to see what it will end up with when all possibilities have been added.

--- Articles ---

We have also added a few articles to the game. Some fruits and vegetables have been prepared, adding a new "department" in the game.

We are also looking into setting up our own little 3D scanning area. As some things are very complicated and time consuming to model and make realistic, it might be easier to scan instead.
So why not kill two birds with one stone and use things easily obtained from everyday life.
Then we can also eat lots of different cakes with a clean conscience as we need them in the game as well :D

On top of vegetables, we have also just started planning and preparing the clothing category. So soon the game will receive a lot of new articles for you to sell.

-----------------------------

Thanks for following along so far. That was all i had to say for now.

If you haven't already, then

Feedback, ideas, comments are very welcome in there, and much appreciated.

I will return to do some more game making
And until next time, have a great sale

Kind regards
Daniel