What’s Next for Megastore Simulator
Hey everyone! I wanted to give you an update on what’s been happening behind the scenes and, more importantly, what’s coming next to Megastore Simulator. For the past three weeks, we’ve been quietly working on a new project called Megastore: Tidy Up Together, a spin-off set in the same Megastore universe. There’s an important reason I’m talking about it here: Megastore Simulator and Megastore: Tidy Up Together share the same codebase. Systems, content, assets, tools, optimizations and improvements developed for one game can often be brought into the other much more easily. Over the past few weeks, we’ve built a lot of things that I now want to bring directly into Megastore Simulator. Megastore: Tidy Up Together has reached a point where its core systems are working and the remaining development can continue while I shift my focus back to Megastore Simulator. While my friend continues working on the remaining parts of Megastore: Tidy Up Together, I’ll begin porting its new content, systems and improvements into Megastore Simulator starting this weekend. I’ve really missed working directly on Megastore, so I’m very excited to get back into it. Here’s what’s coming next.
First Priority: Customer Pooling
Before adding hundreds of new products, there’s one major system I want to introduce first: Customer Pooling. The goal of this system is simple: expanding your store should always be rewarding. Different product groups and departments will attract different groups of customers. Opening a new department won’t simply spread your existing customers across a larger number of products — it will also expand the potential customer base of your store. The same idea will apply when expanding an existing department. Adding more product variety shouldn’t negatively affect your revenue by dividing the same amount of demand between more products. Instead, the system is being designed around a few simple rules:
Opening new departments should increase your earning potential.
Expanding existing departments should increase your earning potential.
Adding more product variety should always be a positive progression step.
The goal is to make sure that growing your Megastore actually feels like growing a business, rather than creating situations where adding more products can accidentally reduce the performance of a department. Alongside Customer Pooling, I’m also looking at increasing the maximum number of customers that can be active in the store. More customers, more products, and larger stores will naturally increase performance requirements, so I’ll also be working on additional optimizations alongside these changes. I want both the economic and technical foundations to be ready before significantly increasing the scale of the game.
Around 200–400 New Products
Across the upcoming expansions, I’m currently planning approximately 200–400 new products, with a large portion focused on Grocery and Toys. My current plan is for the first major content expansion to focus on Grocery. While building the Megastore level for Megastore: Tidy Up Together, we had to look at every department from a different perspective. Every product needed a clear category, every category needed a logical place, and every department needed to make sense visually as part of the whole store. When we started doing this with Grocery, I began noticing many of the same things that a lot of you have been pointing out for a while. Some categories simply didn’t have enough products. Some product groups could be organized much better. Some parts of Grocery felt much more complete than others, while some obvious products and categories were missing entirely. So we started filling those gaps. A large part of that expanded Grocery selection will now start making its way into Megastore Simulator.
Better Product Categories & Department Separation
This work isn’t only about increasing the number of products. Building Megastore: Tidy Up Together forced us to think much more carefully about how an entire Megastore should be organized: which products naturally belong together, which categories deserve their own sections, where one department should end, and another should begin, and how players should immediately understand which part of the store they’re looking at. Working through these questions resulted in a lot of changes to product categorization, department layouts, and visual separation. Many of these improvements will also be brought into Megastore Simulator.
Custom Signs Are Coming
One feature Megastore Simulator has been missing is proper custom signage. While building Megastore: Tidy Up Together, it became very clear how much signs can improve both navigation and the visual identity of individual departments. So I’m planning to introduce a new signage system to Megastore Simulator. You’ll be able to place signs in different sizes throughout your store and write your own text on them. This means you’ll be able to create department signs, category labels, directional signs or simply use them as part of your store’s decoration and layout. The goal is to give you much more control over how your Megastore communicates its layout and to make large stores easier to organize and navigate.
Bakery Rework
The Bakery is also going to receive a major visual rework. While working on Megastore: Tidy Up Together, we redesigned the Bakery and changed the way the department fits visually into the rest of the store. I’m very happy with the direction it went, so I want to bring that work back into Megastore Simulator as well. This won’t simply be a few additional products. The department itself will receive a stronger visual identity and a more complete overall presentation.
More Building & Decoration Options
Another thing I noticed while designing the new Megastore was how many architectural pieces were still missing. There were many situations where I knew exactly how I wanted an area to look, but the pieces required to build it simply didn’t exist yet. So we made them. Over the upcoming updates, I’m planning to bring many of these additions into Megastore Simulator, including:
Placeable columns
New wall types and wall pieces
Checkout barriers
Anti-theft gates
Metal rails and structural pieces
More detailed entrance and checkout areas
Improved balcony and upper-floor railings
Additional decoration options
There are also many smaller additions and improvements that I’m probably forgetting while writing this post. The important difference is that a lot of this content has already been built. The next step is bringing it into Megastore Simulator.
Toys Will Be Expanded Too
Grocery will most likely be the first major expansion, but Toys is also getting more content. There are many additional products as well as new ways to use some of the shelf types we’ve been working with. I’ll share more about the Toys expansion when I get closer to bringing that content into Megastore Simulator.
A Better Foundation for Co-op
There’s also an important long-term benefit from the work we’ve been doing. Megastore: Tidy Up Together already has working co-op infrastructure. This gives us a smaller and more controlled environment where we can develop, test and improve multiplayer systems. That work will also make eventually bringing co-op to Megastore Simulator considerably easier.
Shared Development
Megastore Simulator is a huge project, and there is still a lot I want to build before I consider the game finished. I don’t want to rush Megastore Simulator toward 1.0 just for the sake of reaching 1.0. I want to continue developing it properly for a long time and eventually deliver everything that is promised and more. Megastore: Tidy Up Together is a smaller and more focused spin-off, but because both games share the same codebase, the development work isn’t isolated. Over the last few weeks, we’ve developed a surprising amount of new content, technology and improvements that can now be brought directly back into Megastore Simulator. That shared development is one of the biggest reasons I’m excited about what comes next.
Back to Megastore
Now that Megastore: Tidy Up Together has reached this stage, I’m shifting my focus back to Megastore Simulator. While my friend continues working on the remaining Megastore: Tidy Up Together tasks, I’ll start the porting work this weekend. Not everything I’ve talked about above will arrive in one enormous update. There is simply too much new content for that. Instead, I’ll start bringing these systems, assets and improvements into Megastore Simulator step by step over the upcoming updates. The first priority is the Customer Pool system, together with the optimizations required to support the next stage of the game’s growth. After that, the new products, Grocery expansion, custom signage, Bakery improvements, new building pieces and other content will start following. There is still a huge amount I want to do with Megastore Simulator, and I’ll continue working toward everything promised for the full release, along with many additions that weren’t even part of the original plans. You can expect the first major Megastore Simulator update very soon. Stay tuned, and thank you for all your continued support. ❤️