About the Game
King of Retail 2 is a structurally-deep, simulated retail management experience, built to give you the truest experience possible of being a retail entrepreneur.
Everything, from floor space, to shelf stock to products carried, even wall designs and employee affect your store’s appeal, sales, and profitability.
Simulated down to the finest detail, you’ll experience the challenges, decisions, and successes of a business owner, whether you start from the bottom or build up a bustling business empire!
YOUR STORE, YOUR RULES
Design stores from the ground up with King of Retail 2’s in-game design tools.
Customize store layout, building materials, textures, windows, and build a flow for your store to get customers in the door and through the shopping lines.
Build stores as big as your ambitions. Add multiple levels to create huge shopping centres, and connect floors with elevators and escalators. There is no limit to the styles and designs you can incorporate into your store.
AN EXPANSIVE WORLD TO CONQUER
A fully realized city is yours for the taking. Your choice of location determines what types of customers are nearby, what they buy, and what their tastes are when shopping.
Every building and every location within King of Retail 2 can be expanded into retail space. City layout and income levels play a factor in whether your next store will be a humble corner store, or a multi-level department store in the middle of downtown.
As your stores grow, you can expand into new neighborhoods, and diversify your business model to tackle new markets, from street fashion to high-tech gadgets.
FULLY FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
Hire, train, organize, and put your employees to work. Employees are independent workers and the backbone of your business., with their own behaviours, habits, and interests.
Poor employees are a drain on your bottom line, neglect their duties, and pull poor sales, while good employees can be promoted, mentored, and eventually given the responsibility of managing stores on your behalf.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur who likes to do the dirty work alongside the team, or a big-thinker who knows how to delegate, your employees are there to build your business and bring the world of King of Retail 2 alive.
FROM CONCEPT TO PROFIT
Customize, stylize, and upload your designs to define your brand. King of Retail introduces powerful in-game design tools for store, shelf, and more.
With Steam Workshop integration, you can upload, share, and explore new designs for your store directly from the game.
Concepts are a new addition to King of Retail 2 that allows you to break up your businesses into brands with their own visual identity, style, and reputation.
WHAT ELSE IS IN KING OF RETAIL 2?
King of Retail 2 is taking retail management to the next level with never-before-seen depth and breadth of gameplay that will pull you fully and completely into the retail experience.
A fully simulated retail experience, from Corporate HQ down to Point-of-Sale!
A complex behavioral system for customers and employees, giving them preferences and habits, leading to realistic outcomes in the workplace.
A fully simulated retail world, with local trends and preferences, market forces and seasonality to account for in your business strategy.
Customisable Concepts, or unique brands tied to your business. Create your own logos, perfect your style, and diversify your corporate offerings.
A fully-featured in-game Display Designer.
Screenshots
11 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Since the last update, players have reported a number of bugs as well as severe lag in certain areas. So before starting a longer sprint for the next major update, we wanted to address those issues first. While doing that, we also managed to add a few smaller features along the way.
This update has been focused on two main areas: balancing and optimization.
--- New features
New features are always more exciting to read about than technical improvements, so let us start with that.
Even though our main focus was elsewhere, we still managed to add some new things to the game.
1. Voices
Many of you said you missed the customer voices from the first game, so we have added them back. Both customers and employees now have voices again.
2. End-of-day milestones
The end-of-day screen now shows different milestones. You can track your best days as well as your all-time stats. It also now has proper sounds, along with a few bug fixes.
3. Tutorials
We are continuing to improve the tutorials. We have changed the text to be more entertaining and less instructional, and we have removed some of the repetitive tasks.
--- Balancing
Our last update nudged the game in the right direction in terms of gameplay feel. Based on your feedback, we have now made further improvements.
- Customers will now ask for help more often with low-help articles, and less often with high-help articles. This keeps supermarkets active while making electronics less overwhelming.
- Fresh Start now begins with more money, so you can open stores with more expensive products.
- Buildings at the lower end of the city now add more population, meaning stores in those areas will generally be busier.
- Electronics are now easier to sell overall, and they no longer receive such a large "luxury" penalty.
- Rent now takes both game speed and difficulty into account. This means it is less punishing on faster speeds.
- A starting "boost" gives you more customers during the first few days of opening, to counteract the low awareness in empty stores.
These changes are primarily meant to create an easier start, as well as a more active and fair experience no matter which products you choose to sell.
--- Optimizations
I have gone through many areas of the code to find where the game could be optimized, and I found several opportunities.
The long loading time was primarily caused by terrain generation. Terrain was generated in chunks, and each chunk was generated one at a time. This process is now spread across your CPU, allowing for much faster level loading.
Then there is the navigation mesh, which the AI uses to move around.
It was previously generated across a huge area to make sure even giant stores would always be navigable. It checked all objects in the level and generated across all 26 buildable metres vertically.
In most cases, this meant a lot was being calculated without any real need. That was the cause of the first 10-second lag spike when loading your store.
This has now been rebuilt with a new system, where it generates on your property and per floor instead, reducing that delay to around a second even on medium-sized stores.
Some menus also had long loading times because of the sheer number of products in the game. Using displays, looking at storage units, and similar actions could take several seconds to open, but they should now open immediately.
We have also made optimizations to graphics rendering, physics updates, object generation, and other lower-level CPU/GPU systems.
--- Community stores
I have also come across some exceptional community stores that I would like to share, in case you are looking for inspiration.
ColossalNomis creates very detailed stores. In this case, he built a castle!
And Jold shows what it takes to dominate the leaderboards. Made without any cheats! Very impressive.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/41c24533438770adecef959f8662c10568556412.png
That was all for this update. I hope you enjoy the improvements, and please continue to provide balancing feedback, as it is very helpful when adjusting the game.
So unless something new comes up, I will now continue working on marketing, which is by far the most requested feature in the game.
Have a great weekend, and some great sales.
Kind regards,
Daniel
----- Here is the update log
Minor
- Adjusted weather generation to be sunnier overall
- Adjusted weather generation so the same weather is more likely to last throughout the whole day
- Simplified product collisions to render faster
- When buying displays, you now have the option to duplicate an existing display
- Adjusted help message color to be more attention-grabbing
- You can now end the day when the store you are in is closed
- Clicking the search product tool now also shows ghosts of empty products
- Removed repetitiveness in the "Day at the Store" tutorials
- Changed tutorial texts
- Receive a warning when an off-site store is running without leadership
- Added milestones to the end-of-day screen
- Added sounds to end-of-day screens
- Added notification for the first customer entering the store
- Adjusted notification blur levels
- Customers should no longer ask for help immediately after being suggested a product
- Added voices when helping, asking for help, and checking out at the register
- Cleaned up the supermarket tutorial level
- Instrumental music is now enabled by default. Lyrics can be toggled on
Balancing
- Increased the average population of low-population buildings
- Luxury penalty is now scaled by game difficulty
- How often customers ask for help by category type is now modified by difficulty
- Rent is now collected based on game speed and difficulty
- Reduced repetition in the "A Day at the Store" tutorial
- Increased customers' base question level
- Customers' base question level is now based on segment type
- Customers will not seek help for low-need products they are evaluating
- Game difficulty now affects team score
- Increased "Fresh Start" starting funds
- Added a first-week ramp-up effect for more starting customers
Optimizations
- Optimized how the "Use Display" screen calculates across all products
- Optimized how the "Use Storage" screen calculates across all products
- Examine Product now updates products over several frames instead of one, which caused hitches in larger stores
- Optimized terrain generation so the city and stores load faster
- Adjusted how the navigation mesh is generated to reduce lag when opening a store
- Some units were updating the navigation mesh too often, causing it to be rebuilt many times
- Adjusted object distances and sizes for ray tracing consideration
- Changed elevator navigation settings so they do not trigger navigation mesh changes as often
- Updated product culling so products are no longer rendered at certain distances
- Reduced physics updates per second for customers
Bugs
- "Set All" in the ordering menu is no longer one input behind
- Cart items are no longer one input behind
- Adjusted bad collisions on products that caused them to block in the wrong situations
- Register 2 no longer claimed a larger area than its visuals showed
- Store schedule combined alignment now falls under the proper hours
- High-end GPUs should no longer try to over-optimize Nanite
- Fixed end-of-day behavior when stores and concepts exceed their max level
- Fixed progress bar behavior when switching screens
Since the last update, players have reported a number of bugs as well as severe lag in certain areas. So before starting a longer sprint for the next major update, we wanted to address those issues first. While doing that, we also managed to add a few smaller features along the way.
This update has been focused on two main areas: balancing and optimization.
--- New features
New features are always more exciting to read about than technical improvements, so let us start with that.
Even though our main focus was elsewhere, we still managed to add some new things to the game.
1. Voices
Many of you said you missed the customer voices from the first game, so we have added them back. Both customers and employees now have voices again.
2. End-of-day milestones
The end-of-day screen now shows different milestones. You can track your best days as well as your all-time stats. It also now has proper sounds, along with a few bug fixes.
3. Tutorials
We are continuing to improve the tutorials. We have changed the text to be more entertaining and less instructional, and we have removed some of the repetitive tasks.
--- Balancing
Our last update nudged the game in the right direction in terms of gameplay feel. Based on your feedback, we have now made further improvements.
- Customers will now ask for help more often with low-help articles, and less often with high-help articles. This keeps supermarkets active while making electronics less overwhelming.
- Fresh Start now begins with more money, so you can open stores with more expensive products.
- Buildings at the lower end of the city now add more population, meaning stores in those areas will generally be busier.
- Electronics are now easier to sell overall, and they no longer receive such a large "luxury" penalty.
- Rent now takes both game speed and difficulty into account. This means it is less punishing on faster speeds.
- A starting "boost" gives you more customers during the first few days of opening, to counteract the low awareness in empty stores.
These changes are primarily meant to create an easier start, as well as a more active and fair experience no matter which products you choose to sell.
--- Optimizations
I have gone through many areas of the code to find where the game could be optimized, and I found several opportunities.
The long loading time was primarily caused by terrain generation. Terrain was generated in chunks, and each chunk was generated one at a time. This process is now spread across your CPU, allowing for much faster level loading.
Then there is the navigation mesh, which the AI uses to move around.
It was previously generated across a huge area to make sure even giant stores would always be navigable. It checked all objects in the level and generated across all 26 buildable metres vertically.
In most cases, this meant a lot was being calculated without any real need. That was the cause of the first 10-second lag spike when loading your store.
This has now been rebuilt with a new system, where it generates on your property and per floor instead, reducing that delay to around a second even on medium-sized stores.
Some menus also had long loading times because of the sheer number of products in the game. Using displays, looking at storage units, and similar actions could take several seconds to open, but they should now open immediately.
We have also made optimizations to graphics rendering, physics updates, object generation, and other lower-level CPU/GPU systems.
--- Community stores
I have also come across some exceptional community stores that I would like to share, in case you are looking for inspiration.
ColossalNomis creates very detailed stores. In this case, he built a castle!
And Jold shows what it takes to dominate the leaderboards. Made without any cheats! Very impressive.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/41c24533438770adecef959f8662c10568556412.png
That was all for this update. I hope you enjoy the improvements, and please continue to provide balancing feedback, as it is very helpful when adjusting the game.
So unless something new comes up, I will now continue working on marketing, which is by far the most requested feature in the game.
Have a great weekend, and some great sales.
Kind regards,
Daniel
----- Here is the update log
Minor
- Adjusted weather generation to be sunnier overall
- Adjusted weather generation so the same weather is more likely to last throughout the whole day
- Simplified product collisions to render faster
- When buying displays, you now have the option to duplicate an existing display
- Adjusted help message color to be more attention-grabbing
- You can now end the day when the store you are in is closed
- Clicking the search product tool now also shows ghosts of empty products
- Removed repetitiveness in the "Day at the Store" tutorials
- Changed tutorial texts
- Receive a warning when an off-site store is running without leadership
- Added milestones to the end-of-day screen
- Added sounds to end-of-day screens
- Added notification for the first customer entering the store
- Adjusted notification blur levels
- Customers should no longer ask for help immediately after being suggested a product
- Added voices when helping, asking for help, and checking out at the register
- Cleaned up the supermarket tutorial level
- Instrumental music is now enabled by default. Lyrics can be toggled on
Balancing
- Increased the average population of low-population buildings
- Luxury penalty is now scaled by game difficulty
- How often customers ask for help by category type is now modified by difficulty
- Rent is now collected based on game speed and difficulty
- Reduced repetition in the "A Day at the Store" tutorial
- Increased customers' base question level
- Customers' base question level is now based on segment type
- Customers will not seek help for low-need products they are evaluating
- Game difficulty now affects team score
- Increased "Fresh Start" starting funds
- Added a first-week ramp-up effect for more starting customers
Optimizations
- Optimized how the "Use Display" screen calculates across all products
- Optimized how the "Use Storage" screen calculates across all products
- Examine Product now updates products over several frames instead of one, which caused hitches in larger stores
- Optimized terrain generation so the city and stores load faster
- Adjusted how the navigation mesh is generated to reduce lag when opening a store
- Some units were updating the navigation mesh too often, causing it to be rebuilt many times
- Adjusted object distances and sizes for ray tracing consideration
- Changed elevator navigation settings so they do not trigger navigation mesh changes as often
- Updated product culling so products are no longer rendered at certain distances
- Reduced physics updates per second for customers
Bugs
- "Set All" in the ordering menu is no longer one input behind
- Cart items are no longer one input behind
- Adjusted bad collisions on products that caused them to block in the wrong situations
- Register 2 no longer claimed a larger area than its visuals showed
- Store schedule combined alignment now falls under the proper hours
- High-end GPUs should no longer try to over-optimize Nanite
- Fixed end-of-day behavior when stores and concepts exceed their max level
- Fixed progress bar behavior when switching screens
It is Friday, and as promised, here is a follow-up update to our 0.4.0 release.
It seems like the faster game day speed, starter stores, and multiple complexity levels have been very well received. We have also received a lot of good feedback during the week, and we have used it to make a number of further improvements.
- Difficulty settings
Instead of only adjusting complexity, you can now also adjust the actual difficulty of the game. You can make customers and employees easier or harder to manage, depending on how you want to play.
- Reorganized tutorials
Many players go through all tutorials, but with starter stores, you really only need the basic ones to get going. Because of that, we moved some tutorials into an advanced category, so new players can focus on the most important things first.
- Balancing
Some areas needed balancing adjustments. Electronics in particular had some cases where certain products were hard to sell and gave strange profit results. That has now been corrected. Employee energy and happiness have also received a small boost, and base customer traffic in starter stores has been increased a little.
- Optimization
Unreal defaults to unlimited FPS, which is why some players felt like the game was pushing their PC too hard. This could already be changed in the options, but it is now set to 60 FPS by default. I have also tried to improve loading times when starting the game for the first time. That said, the game still has more than 3,500 products to process, so it will still take a bit of time.
- Quality of life
A number of smaller improvements have also been added. You can now set cart amounts in one place, the summary screen remembers your last selection, news messages will tell you if you are selling products at a negative profit, and customer collision has been removed so the camera will no longer zoom in when they walk nearby.
Overall, this update should make King of Retail 2 smoother, clearer, and easier to get into from the very beginning.
That was all from me for this week :)
Have a nice weekend, and I hope you get some great sales in your shops.
Kind regards
Daniel
---------------------
Here is the update log for those who are interested:
Major
Added an overall difficulty setting, allowing customers to shop more or less, reputation to increase faster or slower, and employee happiness and mood to be easier or harder to manage.
Minor
Default FPS is now set to 60 (can still be changed in the options)
Removed camera collision on NPCs
Added a field to set all cart item amounts at once
Separated tutorials into Basic and Advanced to avoid information overload for new players
Adjusted the one-day guides for scenarios
Added a reset-to-default-price button on the product overview
Summary screen now remembers the last selected category
Optimized first-time startup loading times
News messages now also report products with low profits
Balancing
Save games from before 0.4.0 will not take as long to adjust to the new values
Starter stores now have higher default corporation confidence
Added a bigger variety of products to the electronics starter store to avoid unlucky random product selection
All components now have proper versioning trends
Breaks now restore more energy
Nights now restore more energy
Adjusted component prices and average profit values
Adjusted help needs for components and phones
Existing newer stores now receive a bonus to local knowledge to improve game pace
Bugs
You can no longer access the staff bar while performing tasks
Trends now update correctly after loading
Products now use seeds for randomized pricing, so price adjustments keep a consistent range
Splitters are now copied together with displays
After 3 months of hard work, update 0.4.0 is finally available for you to enjoy. In this update, we have focused on some of the biggest issues you have raised, and tried to address those before continuing further along the roadmap.
The main topics we have focused on are:
- Starter Stores
- Better game feedback
- Improved employee management tools
- Adjustable game settings
This update also includes many other additions and improvements, which I will go through further down in the post.
--- Starter Stores ---
Many of you have said that the beginning of the game can feel tedious or overwhelming, with setting up the store, filling it with inventory, finding the right products, and placing your first orders.
Some of you simply want to get started and begin making sales sooner.
To support that, we have created a set of preset stores that you can jump straight into.
There is now a bakery, a clothing store, a cosmetics store, and an electronics store available as starter options.
That should bring some welcome contrast to the empty gray concrete block you have been used to so far.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/eec8f19750cc03001e02c31dcbd034d5cd6a3d6e.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/ad63fd042ef021fc6baaab01b4431cc07a762bcb.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/3fd2ac2b73f1a94506b37afd99b9c5fc1827aecb.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/5873288d37286ec050a2bb9fbbe79d57509c5e17.png
--- Adjustable game settings ---
A major issue for many players has been the complexity of the game. Another common point of feedback was the pace of the game day. Some felt that the day moved too slowly, while others felt that the level of detail required to manage everything properly became overwhelming.
To help with this, you can now adjust the game in 3 different areas:
1. Game speed
Originally, the game used 4 seconds per in-game minute. That is still available, but you can now also play at 2 seconds per minute, making the day feel closer to the original King of Retail and significantly more action-packed.
2. Product / customer complexity
Compared to the original game, King of Retail 2 added dynamic trends and individual customer segment attraction per product. You can still play with the full system, but you can now also scale it back to a simpler Price / Quality-only simulation, similar to the first game.
3. Employee management level
Some players would prefer to spend less time managing employees. To support that, we have introduced different employee simulation levels. At the simplest level, you only negotiate wages instead of full contracts, fewer job roles are available, and schedule desires and schedule satisfaction are removed.
With these settings, you should now be able to tailor the game much more to your own preferences.
Like managing staff, but not diving too deep into products? Covered.
Like min-maxing products, but want employees to stay simpler? Covered.
Like faster, more intense days? Covered.
Prefer a slower pace? Covered.
Hopefully this makes the game more enjoyable in the way YOU want to play it.
--- Better game feedback ---
The next topic is game clarity.
Adjusting prices, understanding customer needs, and figuring out what to improve in your stores could often feel difficult and unguided. To help with this, we have made several changes:
1. Improved many menus to provide much clearer feedback on your decisions.
2. Added customer feedback, so customers will now tell you what they liked and disliked about their shopping trip.
3. Overhauled the End of Day screen, turning it into a central hub where you can access the most important information in one place.
This should make it MUCH easier to run your stores without needing to search through multiple screens to find the information you need.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/371c4ad4e5f8ffcd006caff281d5a6eb168e7748.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/d25191947ea2bb7b3e5cebda8b31872a217991f5.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/071f225f7427a39804adbb126f8c985c50d8f470.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/832d5a5623d81822256c8b2ca625fc304e252a47.png
--- Improved employee management ---
Some of you reached a point where your stores became larger and larger, and managing many employees with the existing tools became too difficult.
To improve that, we have added the following:
1. A centralized scheduling screen where you can manage all employees in one place.
2. A conversation system that allows you to talk to, negotiate with, promote, and transfer your employees. This finally adds a proper way to do inter-store staff management.
3. A reworked employee overview screen. It now follows a more classic layout like the one from the original game, but with much more added on top. You can now sort, filter, collapse sections, and choose which stats you want to see.
4. Employee feedback. Your employees will now let you know how they are doing during the day, how they feel overall, and they can also send you messages through the End of Day screen.
All of this should make it MUCH easier to manage a larger workforce.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/18412786bd71029924222e6390fa3f48708f3813.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/48febd7746d570543e04220409a97de4c088192b.png
--- New inventory and products ---
We have continued expanding the electronics selection and added a MUCH larger range of products for you to bring into your stores.
We have also expanded the selection of storage units and delivery units, so the option to go both faster and larger is now there.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/98df2b9c085f40f5e1794df6e78f472411491492.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/009ec1136ff9c32479e55bab1885dee65b0c5319.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/b0a93ff683ec8a86b54e934f916dcd196782b08a.png
--- What is next? ---
I plan to do an extra update on Friday to address some of the issues that may come up based on your feedback to this patch.
After that, we can finally begin working on the HQ part of the roadmap.
That means advertising & marketing, HQ managers, multiple concepts, concept talents, and much more, bringing your management options to a whole new level.
That was all for now.
This is by far our biggest update yet, and we hope you will enjoy all the changes. We will continue listening to your feedback, and we know there are still more areas to improve. That work will continue.
So please let us know what you think here on Steam, or join our Discord and help us make King of Retail 2 even better.
Thank you all for being part of the journey, and I hope you will have some great sales in your stores.
Kind regards,
Daniel
Feel free to join our Discord here:
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/75d1d6db85f318f83ac9384f03626a1a3f001cf5.png
--- Update log ---
And for those who would like to dive deeper, here is the complete update log for this patch (almost complete, as I occasionally forget to write something down):
## Major
- Removed all restrictions on decoration placement
- Added new delivery units of various capacities
- Added staff renegotiations
- Added staff promotions
- You can now transfer employees between your stores
- Added a staff conversation system
- Added a screen for editing schedules for all employees in one store
- In-store schedule view now uses a new screen with sorting functionality
- Added an option to select in-game day speed
- Added starting scenarios with pre-built starter stores
- Added simulation depth option for products
- Added simulation depth level for employees
- Added new refrigerated storage options
- Added new basic shelves
- Simulated stores now simulate each individual customer's shopping pattern
- Stores and concepts now gain experience and levels
- Added a new End of Day screen with much more information
- Full staff parameter changes: Happiness, Mood, Familiarity, Energy, and Productivity now change overnight and during the day
- Concepts now specialize and become positioned based on your decisions
- You can now see customer thoughts and feedback about the store
## Minor
- You can now see all products the customer has when overlapping
- Adjusted spacing between speed buttons and store name to reduce misclicks
- Changed the grouped button on the Customer Flow screen
- Added an info button for the Customer Flow screen
- Save games are now sorted by last played when opening the load game screen
- Removed the "Stand by caller" availability contract option. Everyone will have that option, but may be dissatisfied when it happens
- When hiring a new employee, sliders are now set to meet initial demands
- Removed the "Task preference" section from employees
- Added employment statistics to the contract screen
- Changed employee skills
- Added tooltips to basic staff parameters
- Initial contracts now set default happiness and mood
- You can now sort employees in the overview by role, team, wage, seniority, skill, base parameters, and name
- Added information tips to all elements in the product viewer
- Replaced Hype with Luxury in the product viewer
- Added expected price range to the product info screen
- Day simulation now respects game speed
- Fields that are not part of the selected product simulation level are now hidden or grayed out
- Added text values for reputation scores in graphs
- Added info texts to reputations
- Added segment tooltips when hovering a segment in the radial chart
- Improved profile pictures
- Added individual day modifiers
- Population of 0 within the influence ring still spawns an occasional customer
- Store selector on the computer now shows level and reputation
- Reputations are now available on the computer
- Assign cash register priority levels. Employees will use these when opening cash registers
- Added low contract satisfaction message on End of Day
- Offer desired wage to employee directly from End of Day
- Added employee birthday message on End of Day
- Added option to offer birthday presents to employees
- Added trainee period completion message on End of Day
- Shortened setup store tutorial
- Employees now have hobbies
- Employees now tell marital status
- Employees now share what is good/bad right now, and what is good/bad overall
- Increased visibility of HQ and store city pins
## Balancing
- Customers now on average have higher needs for high-reputation items
- Adjusted values for increasing reputations
- Employees should now be more varied in top-level skills
- Work ethic influences initial productivity when hired
- Increased capacity of refrigerated storage units
- Increased randomness in which products customers look at
- Changed customer choosing and taking calculations
- Reducing price below the expected range now adds a higher bonus to chance of sale
- Price randomization of expensive products will no longer place them in the high-penalty zone
- Changed evaluation of how customers choose which product to look at
- Aggressive sales game now has 3 steps down from 5
- Product category reputation now averages based on which products you sell, instead of just being a race to 100%
- Familiarity increases faster, and is now also based on nearby leader skill
- Employee relationships now have more distinct types (hated/loved by all, etc.)
- Energy regeneration now depends on health skill
- Employee parameter changes now happen twice per hour to make them flow more smoothly
- Customer skin now starts aging 10 years later
- Failing to help a customer who asks for help will fail the next sale
- Productivity now affects checkout speed
- Productivity now affects sales speed
- Increased sales skill improvement speed
- Team leaders now increase skill learning speed of team members
- Increased effect of a good sale
- Reduced customer tiredness boost from a good sale
- Sales game speed increases each time a customer is helped
- Initial sales game speed now depends on customer segments
- Schedule satisfaction now starts at 1 and counts down based on unmet needs
- More lenient break/work ratio allowed
## Visuals
- Updated negotiation screen
- Updated contract screen
- Updated employee overview screen
- Updated recruitment screen
- Updated End of Day screen
- Updated product info screen
- Updated KPI screen and added customer thoughts to it
- Updated main computer UI
- Updated customer interaction screen
- Updated ordering screen
## New products
- CPUs
- Motherboards
- RAM
- Keyboards
- Mice
- Hard Drives
- Network Cards
- Phones
- King of Retail 1 and 2 as computer games
## AI
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on the filled status of displays they walk past
- Customers base checkout satisfaction on employee friendliness, scanning speed, and queue time before checkout
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on store crowdedness
- Customers base sales satisfaction on sales interaction skill and personality
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on product price/quality range
- Employees go to their assigned areas immediately
- Employees no longer only look at which customer is closest, but also at how long the raised hand has been waiting when deciding who to help
## Bugs
- Some fruits were missing their box
- Loading graphics options while pausing the game no longer causes them not to load
- Closing the "Save Game" screen in the store no longer forces normal speed
- Team orders now have a close button
- Customer Flow now updates properly when toggling grouped/non-grouped
- Customer Flow now displays properly when opening the screen
- Article info on computer no longer has a return button initially
- Fixed metal floor that could only be black
- Contract clauses now save/load properly
- Adaptability skill now properly affects familiarity speed increase
- You can again inspect hovered products on the computer
- Hovering products in carts now shows detail overlay
- Fixed bug that caused customer reputations to fluctuate between days
- Customers now calculate proper distance to registers
- Some settings no longer override all values of schedule satisfaction
- Removed potential crash when a simulated store has 0 customers
- Removed bug requiring multiple clicks for unpacking, depending on the first product in queue
- Product decorations are working again
- Doors could sometimes block each other for no apparent reason in build mode
- High talents worked in reverse
- Big sales now force the customer to look at the suggested product following the sale
- Customers now stop looking for products immediately if none are remotely interesting to them
- No longer seeing the inside of your own head
- Local knowledge now shows proper segment values
- Customer Flow analytics now properly sums all customers when grouped
- Fixed bug where closing elevator menu after selecting floor would lock the elevator and game
- Fixed bug where employees would only help a customer once
- Silent radio station is now actually silent
After 3 months of hard work, update 0.4.0 is finally available for you to enjoy. In this update, we have focused on some of the biggest issues you have raised, and tried to address those before continuing further along the roadmap.
The main topics we have focused on are:
- Starter Stores
- Better game feedback
- Improved employee management tools
- Adjustable game settings
This update also includes many other additions and improvements, which I will go through further down in the post.
--- Starter Stores ---
Many of you have said that the beginning of the game can feel tedious or overwhelming, with setting up the store, filling it with inventory, finding the right products, and placing your first orders.
Some of you simply want to get started and begin making sales sooner.
To support that, we have created a set of preset stores that you can jump straight into.
There is now a bakery, a clothing store, a cosmetics store, and an electronics store available as starter options.
That should bring some welcome contrast to the empty gray concrete block you have been used to so far.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/eec8f19750cc03001e02c31dcbd034d5cd6a3d6e.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/ad63fd042ef021fc6baaab01b4431cc07a762bcb.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/3fd2ac2b73f1a94506b37afd99b9c5fc1827aecb.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/5873288d37286ec050a2bb9fbbe79d57509c5e17.png
--- Adjustable game settings ---
A major issue for many players has been the complexity of the game. Another common point of feedback was the pace of the game day. Some felt that the day moved too slowly, while others felt that the level of detail required to manage everything properly became overwhelming.
To help with this, you can now adjust the game in 3 different areas:
1. Game speed
Originally, the game used 4 seconds per in-game minute. That is still available, but you can now also play at 2 seconds per minute, making the day feel closer to the original King of Retail and significantly more action-packed.
2. Product / customer complexity
Compared to the original game, King of Retail 2 added dynamic trends and individual customer segment attraction per product. You can still play with the full system, but you can now also scale it back to a simpler Price / Quality-only simulation, similar to the first game.
3. Employee management level
Some players would prefer to spend less time managing employees. To support that, we have introduced different employee simulation levels. At the simplest level, you only negotiate wages instead of full contracts, fewer job roles are available, and schedule desires and schedule satisfaction are removed.
With these settings, you should now be able to tailor the game much more to your own preferences.
Like managing staff, but not diving too deep into products? Covered.
Like min-maxing products, but want employees to stay simpler? Covered.
Like faster, more intense days? Covered.
Prefer a slower pace? Covered.
Hopefully this makes the game more enjoyable in the way YOU want to play it.
--- Better game feedback ---
The next topic is game clarity.
Adjusting prices, understanding customer needs, and figuring out what to improve in your stores could often feel difficult and unguided. To help with this, we have made several changes:
1. Improved many menus to provide much clearer feedback on your decisions.
2. Added customer feedback, so customers will now tell you what they liked and disliked about their shopping trip.
3. Overhauled the End of Day screen, turning it into a central hub where you can access the most important information in one place.
This should make it MUCH easier to run your stores without needing to search through multiple screens to find the information you need.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/371c4ad4e5f8ffcd006caff281d5a6eb168e7748.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/d25191947ea2bb7b3e5cebda8b31872a217991f5.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/071f225f7427a39804adbb126f8c985c50d8f470.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/832d5a5623d81822256c8b2ca625fc304e252a47.png
--- Improved employee management ---
Some of you reached a point where your stores became larger and larger, and managing many employees with the existing tools became too difficult.
To improve that, we have added the following:
1. A centralized scheduling screen where you can manage all employees in one place.
2. A conversation system that allows you to talk to, negotiate with, promote, and transfer your employees. This finally adds a proper way to do inter-store staff management.
3. A reworked employee overview screen. It now follows a more classic layout like the one from the original game, but with much more added on top. You can now sort, filter, collapse sections, and choose which stats you want to see.
4. Employee feedback. Your employees will now let you know how they are doing during the day, how they feel overall, and they can also send you messages through the End of Day screen.
All of this should make it MUCH easier to manage a larger workforce.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/18412786bd71029924222e6390fa3f48708f3813.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/48febd7746d570543e04220409a97de4c088192b.png
--- New inventory and products ---
We have continued expanding the electronics selection and added a MUCH larger range of products for you to bring into your stores.
We have also expanded the selection of storage units and delivery units, so the option to go both faster and larger is now there.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/98df2b9c085f40f5e1794df6e78f472411491492.png
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/009ec1136ff9c32479e55bab1885dee65b0c5319.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/b0a93ff683ec8a86b54e934f916dcd196782b08a.png
--- What is next? ---
I plan to do an extra update on Friday to address some of the issues that may come up based on your feedback to this patch.
After that, we can finally begin working on the HQ part of the roadmap.
That means advertising & marketing, HQ managers, multiple concepts, concept talents, and much more, bringing your management options to a whole new level.
That was all for now.
This is by far our biggest update yet, and we hope you will enjoy all the changes. We will continue listening to your feedback, and we know there are still more areas to improve. That work will continue.
So please let us know what you think here on Steam, or join our Discord and help us make King of Retail 2 even better.
Thank you all for being part of the journey, and I hope you will have some great sales in your stores.
Kind regards,
Daniel
Feel free to join our Discord here:
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/75d1d6db85f318f83ac9384f03626a1a3f001cf5.png
--- Update log ---
And for those who would like to dive deeper, here is the complete update log for this patch (almost complete, as I occasionally forget to write something down):
## Major
- Removed all restrictions on decoration placement
- Added new delivery units of various capacities
- Added staff renegotiations
- Added staff promotions
- You can now transfer employees between your stores
- Added a staff conversation system
- Added a screen for editing schedules for all employees in one store
- In-store schedule view now uses a new screen with sorting functionality
- Added an option to select in-game day speed
- Added starting scenarios with pre-built starter stores
- Added simulation depth option for products
- Added simulation depth level for employees
- Added new refrigerated storage options
- Added new basic shelves
- Simulated stores now simulate each individual customer's shopping pattern
- Stores and concepts now gain experience and levels
- Added a new End of Day screen with much more information
- Full staff parameter changes: Happiness, Mood, Familiarity, Energy, and Productivity now change overnight and during the day
- Concepts now specialize and become positioned based on your decisions
- You can now see customer thoughts and feedback about the store
## Minor
- You can now see all products the customer has when overlapping
- Adjusted spacing between speed buttons and store name to reduce misclicks
- Changed the grouped button on the Customer Flow screen
- Added an info button for the Customer Flow screen
- Save games are now sorted by last played when opening the load game screen
- Removed the "Stand by caller" availability contract option. Everyone will have that option, but may be dissatisfied when it happens
- When hiring a new employee, sliders are now set to meet initial demands
- Removed the "Task preference" section from employees
- Added employment statistics to the contract screen
- Changed employee skills
- Added tooltips to basic staff parameters
- Initial contracts now set default happiness and mood
- You can now sort employees in the overview by role, team, wage, seniority, skill, base parameters, and name
- Added information tips to all elements in the product viewer
- Replaced Hype with Luxury in the product viewer
- Added expected price range to the product info screen
- Day simulation now respects game speed
- Fields that are not part of the selected product simulation level are now hidden or grayed out
- Added text values for reputation scores in graphs
- Added info texts to reputations
- Added segment tooltips when hovering a segment in the radial chart
- Improved profile pictures
- Added individual day modifiers
- Population of 0 within the influence ring still spawns an occasional customer
- Store selector on the computer now shows level and reputation
- Reputations are now available on the computer
- Assign cash register priority levels. Employees will use these when opening cash registers
- Added low contract satisfaction message on End of Day
- Offer desired wage to employee directly from End of Day
- Added employee birthday message on End of Day
- Added option to offer birthday presents to employees
- Added trainee period completion message on End of Day
- Shortened setup store tutorial
- Employees now have hobbies
- Employees now tell marital status
- Employees now share what is good/bad right now, and what is good/bad overall
- Increased visibility of HQ and store city pins
## Balancing
- Customers now on average have higher needs for high-reputation items
- Adjusted values for increasing reputations
- Employees should now be more varied in top-level skills
- Work ethic influences initial productivity when hired
- Increased capacity of refrigerated storage units
- Increased randomness in which products customers look at
- Changed customer choosing and taking calculations
- Reducing price below the expected range now adds a higher bonus to chance of sale
- Price randomization of expensive products will no longer place them in the high-penalty zone
- Changed evaluation of how customers choose which product to look at
- Aggressive sales game now has 3 steps down from 5
- Product category reputation now averages based on which products you sell, instead of just being a race to 100%
- Familiarity increases faster, and is now also based on nearby leader skill
- Employee relationships now have more distinct types (hated/loved by all, etc.)
- Energy regeneration now depends on health skill
- Employee parameter changes now happen twice per hour to make them flow more smoothly
- Customer skin now starts aging 10 years later
- Failing to help a customer who asks for help will fail the next sale
- Productivity now affects checkout speed
- Productivity now affects sales speed
- Increased sales skill improvement speed
- Team leaders now increase skill learning speed of team members
- Increased effect of a good sale
- Reduced customer tiredness boost from a good sale
- Sales game speed increases each time a customer is helped
- Initial sales game speed now depends on customer segments
- Schedule satisfaction now starts at 1 and counts down based on unmet needs
- More lenient break/work ratio allowed
## Visuals
- Updated negotiation screen
- Updated contract screen
- Updated employee overview screen
- Updated recruitment screen
- Updated End of Day screen
- Updated product info screen
- Updated KPI screen and added customer thoughts to it
- Updated main computer UI
- Updated customer interaction screen
- Updated ordering screen
## New products
- CPUs
- Motherboards
- RAM
- Keyboards
- Mice
- Hard Drives
- Network Cards
- Phones
- King of Retail 1 and 2 as computer games
## AI
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on the filled status of displays they walk past
- Customers base checkout satisfaction on employee friendliness, scanning speed, and queue time before checkout
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on store crowdedness
- Customers base sales satisfaction on sales interaction skill and personality
- Customers base shopping satisfaction on product price/quality range
- Employees go to their assigned areas immediately
- Employees no longer only look at which customer is closest, but also at how long the raised hand has been waiting when deciding who to help
## Bugs
- Some fruits were missing their box
- Loading graphics options while pausing the game no longer causes them not to load
- Closing the "Save Game" screen in the store no longer forces normal speed
- Team orders now have a close button
- Customer Flow now updates properly when toggling grouped/non-grouped
- Customer Flow now displays properly when opening the screen
- Article info on computer no longer has a return button initially
- Fixed metal floor that could only be black
- Contract clauses now save/load properly
- Adaptability skill now properly affects familiarity speed increase
- You can again inspect hovered products on the computer
- Hovering products in carts now shows detail overlay
- Fixed bug that caused customer reputations to fluctuate between days
- Customers now calculate proper distance to registers
- Some settings no longer override all values of schedule satisfaction
- Removed potential crash when a simulated store has 0 customers
- Removed bug requiring multiple clicks for unpacking, depending on the first product in queue
- Product decorations are working again
- Doors could sometimes block each other for no apparent reason in build mode
- High talents worked in reverse
- Big sales now force the customer to look at the suggested product following the sale
- Customers now stop looking for products immediately if none are remotely interesting to them
- No longer seeing the inside of your own head
- Local knowledge now shows proper segment values
- Customer Flow analytics now properly sums all customers when grouped
- Fixed bug where closing elevator menu after selecting floor would lock the elevator and game
- Fixed bug where employees would only help a customer once
- Silent radio station is now actually silent
- Removed text saying tutorials are mandatory
Dear Retailers,
The holidays are officially upon us with the start of the Steam Winter Sale, and we ARE participating with our lowest discount yet, with up to 25%. In all likelihood, if you’re reading this, you’re probably already a player. But if you have any friends looking for a deep Retail simulation, now would be the best time to put that in their gift stocking!
Enough shilling, as we have a host of new updates, fixes, and content ready for the Sale. We’re doing a lot of under-the-hood work this update, but with changes that should improve the experience for everyone and better realize the fundamental gameplay behind King of Retail 2.
Actually, there’s just one more plug I’d like to make before we move on:
The Winter Retail Challenge is Ongoing
Just a top-of-mind reminder that the Winter Retail Challenge is in full swing on our Community Discord. If you haven’t joined yet, and are interested, make sure to check it out.
With holiday assets already available in the Steam Workshop, your own assets, or any combination of to create your own winter-themed retail masterpiece. Supermarkets, boutiques, tech stores, malls—anything goes, as long as it embraces the season and shows off a festive cheer.
We’re accepting screenshots or short videos (whatever is easiest) to be submitted in Discord.
Entries will be judged on creativity, theme execution, store layout and flow, use of seasonal decorations, and overall festive charm. We’ll choose the Top 3 creations, and we’ll be providing a Steam Gift Card for the top ideas.
We’re running until January 5th, so give it a shot and maybe win a prize for your design.
And with that, let’s move onto 0.3.4.0 Patch updates and what’s in store!
Huge Engine Improvements - Faster Loading, Bigger Stores
A week ago, a player reached out to me due to an issue with AI customers not working. I took a look at his save and, lo and behold, there were over 300 NPC’s in his store during busy hours (it was a very big floor space) and had over 144,000 stocked retail items.
Suffice to say, this had a huge impact on performance. It took me 1½ hour to get through a day in his store on my mid level machine due to constant lagging. So I took a look and managed to improve the performance greatly.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/00c60e48ded5c223d0d1dd7f35d3974be7352251.png"]
To break things down, we’ve improved King of Retail 2’s engine handling to address 3 major issues:
Stores can eventually get too big, causing load issues and slowdown as the game both has to render and maintain individually stocked items, as well as customers. =
The number of allowed AI controllers would cap out at about 300, leading to additional customers having no behaviors. This resulted in customers clogging entrance ways with no behavior or intent to buy anything (realistic, but not quite the realism I was going for) =
300 customers evaluating 13.000 different product locations is a lot of calculations, and only worsens with more customers or products
Now when opening or loading a saved game, products now load in progressively instead of trying to do it all in one process, which reduces RAM spikes, and the need of looking up the same thing multiple times.
I also changed the way customers evaluate products, so they evaluate a random subset instead. This means you can now add as many products as you like, without it increasing this need for calculations.
Then I changed the way customers navigate as well as doing some manual changes based on distance, like when do animations need to be seen, when should they be raytraced etc.
In essence, this has been a fantastic opportunity to stress-test King of Retail 2, and it’s allowed us to make a lot of under-the-hood changes to improve overall performance during regular play. And the store that lagged and took me 1½ hour to get through 1 game day i can now play on increased speed without issues.
So those of you with big stores should feel an impact, and now be able to go even bigger!
The New Tutorial System is Launched!
Tutorialization has been a big challenge to tackle, in part because we have so many open-ended ways to approach the game, either from the top-down or bottom-up, that its tricky to know exactly where to start.
With an all-new “Learn to Play” function in the New Game menu, we’ve introduced a 4-Step Tutorial that covers the basics of how to play, without dipping too heavily into scenarios or extensive pre-fabs that hold your hand step-by-step. I’ve identified Finding Information and Menuing to be among some of the big things that become stopping points for new players, so we’re introducing players to not only the flow of gameplay but also how to move, find things, and access features.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/59f5fd2f2038acbd56b7a48172560eabfdac19dd.png"]
This is a bottom-up approach at its core, at least initially, as we know the general fundamentals of gameplay are both valuable to get into early but also less likely to change as we progress through Early Access and add new features to the top-level.
If you’re new to King of Retail 2, I encourage you to check out the new Tutorial mode and leave your thoughts in the comments below or in our Community Discord, as this is an active initiative that we’ll be continuously improving until 1.0.
This is My Electric Feel: Electronics Product Update
Long requested, and given enough time so that we can get the products right: Electronics will be making their way into King of Retail 2 with this latest update, with more Electronic products to come.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/d99f54af8e2b3f7e2242c7004ca0bd608d94a1b4.png"]
Perhaps one of our biggest brand catalogues in terms of sheer possibility and diversity, Electronics are the big money makers of big box retail, and now they’re yours!
With today’s update, we will be launching with Consumer GPUs and Video Games as product categories. We’ll also be looking at adding other computer hardware, including RAM hardware, in future updates to come in the new year.
GPUs will also pilot the new Trending Demand dynamic for customers, who may prefer particular models and colors which can change throughout the year. Buying a variety of stock and being reflexive about your stocking choices can now pay off with more frequent sales.
Full Patch Notes Ahead!
Coming today in update 3.4.0
Major
Overhauled tutorial system to be more interactive and with GIF's
Removed tutorial flow from main game.
Minor
HQ are required from day 1
Reduced loading time drastically when managing properties in the city screen
Improved product overlay layout
Tutorial panels gets transparent when hovering them
Adjusted expand store menu
Change to soft pointer references for all product meshes and material (Optimization stuff)
Changed product importing flow, which should result in lower memory spikes upon loading
Added see through effects on display controls
Changed save game load process to account for high product numbers
In game hud auto scales to fit within the menu
Changed distance from where animations are showing
Changed distance from where face morphs are applied
Changed distance where raytracing is applied
Adjusted AI movement behavior
Added version trending system for GPU's with updated twice per year.
AI
Failing to take a product due to luxury value, needs are reduced as if taken, to make this having an effect and not just be time waste
Customer will not look at same product twice.
Sales staff can reduce the luxury penalty by 30% based on skills and interaction
Added product batching where AI evaluates a random selection of products to avoid lag spikes in large stores
Increased maximum allowed AI rates
Bugs
If next customer exceed the max AI limit, customer will not spawn
Updating all store product counts when leaving the store
No more AI sidestepping
Products
Added GPU's
Added games
Added mascara
Added perfumes
Featured Mod of the Week
This week, we’ll be looking at some of the fine Displays uploaded through the in-game designer. Our Featured Mod today is the Display Skin Care 3x3 / Hautpflege Regal 3x3 by Lady-Kasya, which is one of several sized display styles specifically for skin care.
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44799837/a557c40d1cd14d9f65284e80c1d3b4a300c2854b.jpg"]
Coming of the back of our October update, these elegant displays are perfect for premium, luxury brand cosmetic and care products. Consider joining the Steam Workshop and popping a few in your next boutique.
-
We’ll be sharing some additional news closer to the end of the year with plans for 2026 on the horizon. Many, many gaps have been closed over the last few months in order to streamline gameplay and improve the base experience. We’re not there yet, but the new year will entail more in-depth features and new additions the game that I’m excited to share with you soon.
As always, consider joining the Community Discord as it’s really the most direct channel I have to hear your feedback and suggestions, as well as look over your Winter Retail Contest submissions, so please have at it! I’ll be on my Twitch channel tomorrow, streaming development live, so please also pop in to say hi, and possibly get a sneak-peak on what’s to come next year.
Until next time, happy sales.
-Daniel
Current Release
22846709
Uploaded Jun 19, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
KingofRetail2.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
5.2 GB
22846709
16FE7653
ccddee98c5435b0357089aca8691ffd086a11c93046085d80316c045c1559ad8
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Download King of Retail 2 for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of King of Retail 2 for free. King of Retail 2 is a Casual released by Freaking Games.