King of Retail is a store management simulation game developed by Freaking Games and published by Iceberg Interactive. The gameplay involves managing a store through buying inventory, building displays for products, and helping customers. However, there are additional elements of store management such as designing advertisements, hiring staff, managing their schedules, and more.
The first thing that struck me when I began playing this game was how significant of a role the player character has. I was expecting to go into this game playing a sort of omnipresent manager who could make changes to the store from an all-encompassing menu. This is not the case, however. King of Retail strongly drives home the idea that as a new store with just one person working, everything has to be handled by that one person. At one point during my second day open, a giant crowd of people came in, several of whom wanted to ask me questions while several others were waiting at the register to be checked out. At the same time, the influx of people was creating low stock in many items, which meant I was going to have to order more. It was chaos!
Because of this experience, I felt incentivized to hire staff as soon as possible, but I also wasn’t making much money each day, so I was hesitant to do so. This kind of conundrum brought an element of realism to a game that could have otherwise been very repetitive, especially at the beginning. I was also particularly impressed with the large collection of other activities—presumably similar to minigames—you could complete as a manager. This again brought in fresh elements to relatively simple base gameplay.
King of Retail also has different game modes: a mode to play as your own boss with the opening your own store, and a mode to manage other businesses throughout the city. There is also a “business school” option, which presents the player with instructions on different aspects of the game. I thought this was a creative way to incorporate tutorial material, alongside the tutorial players receive when playing for the first time.
I enjoyed playing King of Retail, and could definitely see myself getting addicted to trying new things with my store each day, and trying to sell as much as possible. There is definitely a strong and relatively simple gameplay loop for players who are looking for this kind of simulation game. I also appreciated some of the (seemingly, as I am not a frequent player of this genre!) unique elements like creating ads and conducting staff interviews, for example.
This being said, there were a few things that tripped me up during gameplay. Though there is a direct, in-game tutorial for basic aspects like building displays for items and ordering stock for your store, there are some other mechanics that get little explanation. As I said previously, I was swarmed with customers who wanted to ask me questions, but when I was presented with the conversation UI, it confused me and I sort of started pressing random buttons to see if things worked. This menu, along with other menus like those for ordering stock and putting that stock on shelves, is a bit confusing, and for me, somewhat unintuitive. It took some experimenting to figure things out.
As I said, there is the “business school” tutorial mode, which I like as a creative solution for extended tutorials. However, something I found a bit clunky was that every time the player wants to go into this mode, they have to create a new manager, or save, essentially. Once they’ve gone through the character creation screen, they can choose which mode they’d like to play. As far as I could tell, the player then has to repeat this process every time they’d like to go to business school.
Even as someone not well versed in simulation games, I had fun with King of Retail and was impressed with the wide array of activities available. Aside from a few elements I found somewhat unpolished, I can see the potential for endless replay-ability, especially if the player is a fan of the genre.
Check Out the King of Retail Steam Early Access Trailer:
King of Retail is available for $17.99 for Windows PC and Mac via Steam Early Access.
I have been playing video games since I got my first pink Gameboy Advance SP when I was six years old. From that point on, video games have held a special place in my heart and I have been fascinated by the way games involve the player in the narrative and how their mechanics interact with that narrative. As an aspiring video game narrative writer, I jump at the opportunity to play any and all games at my disposal.
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