Megastore Simulator · build 24740823 · published
Version 0.7.0 is here, bringing a major expansion to store customization, new Wine & Spirits products, new shelves and building styles, and several improvements across Megastore Simulator.
This is also the first update where content created for Megastore Tidy Up Together has been brought back into Megastore Simulator. One of the advantages of the two games sharing the same universe and infrastructure is that suitable content can benefit both games, and the new decoration set is the first step in that direction.
This update adds over 30 new decoration and store-customization items, 43 new alcohol products, 4 new shelves, new flooring and walls, customizable signage, and new tools for controlling how customers move through your store.
A new Decorations tab has been added to the Computer.
Decorative items and store-customization objects can now be purchased directly from this tab. Existing items such as the Fitting Room, Mannequin, and Inflatable Pool have also been moved here to keep customization items together.
The update introduces a wide variety of new decorations and functional store objects, including:
10 different flower decorations
Anti-theft gates
Entrance gates
Short and long metal barriers
Trolley return station
Shopping basket stand
Musical Toy Tryout Stand
Educational Toy Tryout Stand
Robot, Scientist, and Alien statues
Basketball hoops
Kids' ride-on car
Seafood Scale
Seafood Preparation Station
Produce Weighing Table
Short and long Wooden Separators
Small and Wide customizable Signage
Decorative Bakery Corner
Some of these are purely decorative, while others have their own gameplay functionality.
The new Entrance Gates are one-way gates that NPCs can only pass through in the intended direction.
By combining entrance gates with the new metal barriers, you can now create proper dedicated entrance and exit routes, organize checkout areas, and have much more control over customer flow.
Apart from giving you more control over store layouts, this should also make larger stores feel much closer to real retail environments.
Wooden Separators can similarly be used to divide departments or create employee-only-looking back areas, such as separating the working section of your Bakery from the customer area.
Two new sign types have been added:
Small Signage
Wide Signage
They can be used for departments, categories, shelf labels, checkout areas, or wherever else you want to improve navigation and presentation inside your store.
Signage can be customized with:
3 different text styles
Background color
Text color
Custom text
Adjustable text size
Selectable icons
Selectable alignment options
This is the first step toward giving stores a much stronger visual identity and allowing you to properly label different areas instead of relying entirely on the default department layout.
Four new shelves have been added.
New Small and Wide Grocery Shelves have been added.
They use the same dimensions and hold the same number of products as their existing counterparts, so existing layout ratios remain familiar, but they feature a more modern and detailed design.
The Bakery has also received new Small and Wide wooden shelves, designed with warmer colors to better fit the atmosphere of the department.
A matching Decorative Bakery Corner is included. It does not hold products, but allows the wooden shelves to connect into much cleaner-looking corner layouts.
New saves starting with Grocery or Bakery will now use these new shelves as their default starting shelves.
Two new flooring options have been added:
Warm Beige Tile — Standard-sized tiles with warmer tones that work especially well in Bakery and Produce areas.
Bright White Tile — Larger white tiles for a cleaner and more modern retail appearance.
Two new walls have also been added:
Wood Panel Wall — A warmer wooden style designed particularly for Bakery and similar interiors.
Double Trim White Wall — A clean white wall with upper and lower trim and a lightly textured surface.
The second-floor glass railing has also been replaced with a more realistic design, and the pillars surrounding the railing have been removed.
The first and second floors now have matching floor-to-ceiling heights as well. The first floor has been reduced slightly while the second-floor ceiling has been raised.
Grocery has received a significant late-game expansion with 43 new alcohol products spread across 8 new licenses.
The new selection includes:
Beer
Wine
Vodka
Whisky
Liqueurs
Gin
Cognac
Champagne
Other alcoholic beverages
The Wine & Spirits licenses are designed to become increasingly profitable as you move through the later licenses.
One of my goals with this expansion was to give Grocery stronger late-game profit potential. These products are generally more profitable than regular Grocery products, with later licenses providing progressively better opportunities.
Bottled beers are displayed in fridges, while the remaining products use regular Grocery shelves.
None of the new alcohol products require cold storage in the warehouse.
The packaging has also been configured so that one box contains exactly enough products to completely fill one shelf placement, making restocking and warehouse planning more straightforward.
Alongside the new content:
Fixed an issue where spoiled products disposed of by Restockers were not removed from stock, which could create ghost stock.
Fixed an issue where boxes containing spoiled products could reappear after being disposed of by Restockers.
Fixed an issue that could prevent the Store label color from being saved correctly.
Made several additional optimizations to improve FPS.
Originally, this update was planned to be the Customer Pool Update.
The initial solution I was working on was to create separate customer groups for individual departments. However, after working further on the system, I don't think that approach completely solves the underlying problem.
It would require fairly significant changes to the existing sales rates and profitability of older departments. More importantly, every time another department was added to the game, the solution would eventually require increasing the maximum number of simultaneous customers again.
That might work in the short term, but continuously increasing the customer limit as the game grows would eventually create its own optimization problems.
Because of that, I decided not to rush this system just to get it into this update.
I believe the game needs a more advanced solution that considers the entire relationship between customers, demand, departments, product variety, sales rates, and the economy.
There will therefore be substantial changes to the demand and economy systems when this update eventually arrives.
This system is also important for safely bringing larger amounts of additional product content into Megastore Simulator, so I want to spend more time designing it and try to arrive at a solution that can continue scaling as the game grows rather than requiring another replacement later.
Since that work will take longer, I decided to prioritize the Decoration and Wine & Spirits content and release it separately instead of holding everything back.
The current decoration selection is not the final set.
This is only the first content transfer from Megastore: Tidy Up Together, and the customization side of Megastore Simulator will continue expanding over future updates.
Some of the things I would like to add include:
3D wall-mounted store lettering and signage
Directional signage for the ends of aisles and store corridors
More department-specific decorations
More functional retail objects
Additional store customization options
I also want to expand customization further into the actual building itself.
Features such as placing structural columns or creating walls are possibilities I am considering. I intentionally didn't add objects like these to the current Decorations shop because having structural building pieces arrive inside delivery boxes doesn't make much sense.
A dedicated Building Mode may be a better solution for these systems. I'll be exploring how this should work in future updates.
As always, I'll be closely following your feedback on the new content.
Let me know what you like, what you don't like, what feels unnecessary, and especially what kinds of decorations or customization options you would like to see next.
This is the first update bringing content from Megastore: Tidy Up Together into Megastore Simulator, but it definitely won't be the last.
Thank you very much for your continued support.
I'll also have more to share about Megastore: Tidy Up Together soon!