Dear retailers,

Today is the day! The Rise to the Top update is live in King of Retail 2. Download and play now, and enjoy a 25% discount as you grow your empire to new heights. 

Let’s take a look at what’s in store!

UPDATE HIGHLIGHT: Escalators, Elevators, & Stairs, Oh My.

The doors open nice and smooth in-game, don't worry; it's just the nature of the tiny gif.

You’ve been able to build multiple floors in your stores prior to this update, but now, their functionality has been fully implemented. After much testing and tweaking, your customers can travel between the floors of your establishment as they see fit. This feature unlocks a tonne of floor space for customisation that gives you more room to shape your store’s identity—or even build a full-scale megastore. 

But how did they get up there?

Well, you’ve got three options. Elevators, escalators, and stairs!

Slot these into your store and bask in vertical glory as your customers ascend and descend throughout your retail masterpiece. Upper floors are now fully functional, just as your ground floor always has been.

I’m really excited to see what you’re able to pull off with this expanded scope, and whilst we’re on the subject of customers, let’s move onto…

UPDATE HIGHLIGHT: Access Points & Customer Flow

Originally, customers would squeeze their way through your established entrances however they saw fit, which could feel unnatural and cause them to exhibit… “unusual” behaviour. But now, you’re the one in control.

Following player feedback, we’ve added additional options to any door that you place in your store, letting you change their functionality to serve as only an Entrance, only an Exit, Both (the standard setting before this update), and finally, Courier-specific doors. 

That way, you can now direct the flow of traffic and set up a back entrance exclusively for deliveries.

We’ve covered foot traffic, we’ve covered your delivery setups, as well as all the extra space you now have to stock those deliveries.

So, let’s take a look at what new products have been cleared for sale in your store.

UPDATE HIGHLIGHT: New Products!

With the Health & Beauty line having been introduced in our previous major update, we’re expanding the articles available even further with Rise to the Top.

Take a look.

The new additions are as follows:

• Face Cleansers

• Sunscreen

• Body Lotion

• Self-Tan

• Scrub

• Deodorant

Add the new line-up into your store with this latest update, make use of that extra space, and ensure that all of your customers are feeling both healthy and beautiful.

UPDATE HIGHLIGHT: Build Mode - Ceiling, Roofs, and Intuitiveness

This update marks a major milestone. The changes began rolling out in smaller chunks across earlier patches, and with Build Mode: Expanded as the first step on our roadmap, I’m delighted to see it fully realised today.

We’ve covered the vertical aspects of Build Mode, but there's still more to discuss.

With two new features, the Ceiling Painter and the Roof Designer, you can now further tweak how your store looks both inside and out. Together, you’re able to customise your ceilings just as you would with your walls and floors, and you’re also able to add some more personality to your roofs, with slants, glass panels, and much more. 

But that’s not all.

Previously, your inventory (as in, your shelves, registers, etc.) could only be edited when you were in your store in-person. This was a bit fiddly, as it meant you’d need to hop back and forth between Build Mode and your store if you wanted to adjust everything.

But I am happy to say that it is no longer the case.

Your inventory can be relocated directly from Build Mode, making reorganising your store so much more intuitive. 

Although the expanded Build Mode is complete and I’ll be proceeding with the next steps in the roadmap (more on that below), I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for your feedback on these changes, just in case they ever need a touch-up or a hotfix, so please keep your feedback coming. It’s extremely helpful!

Rise to the Top - Patch Notes

With those highlights taken care of, below you’ll find the full list of patch notes for the Rise to the Top update, which you can play right now.

Major

• Removed all wall placement limitations; elements can now go across multiple walls, rather than being restricted by a segment.

• Direct the flow of customers by assigning Entrances, Exits, No-Access, and Courier Entrances.

• Added Chinese Translations,

• Added elevators, stairs, and escalators to your store.

• Upgraded the engine version, leading to reduced raytracing noise on material surfaces.

• Added the Ceiling Painter & Roof Designer tools in Build Mode.

Minor

• Big entrances can be moved left and right.

• Updated the door and wall element hover UI.

• Added UI buttons for door entrance usage.

• Couriers now use Courier-specific entrances, if applicable.

• Save games convert properly to the new system.

• Added virtual "lava" to Entrances, and No-Access doors, preventing the AI from going through them, unless they have no other option.

• Added a new construction rule: at least one Entrance and one Exit, and doors can’t overlap anything else.

• You can now move inventory around in Build Mode.

• Shapes no longer influence the location validation of your inventory.

• Product decorations no longer influence location validation of your inventory.

• Lamps produce light more cleanly.

• Posters can be scaled up.

• Increased the usage of door sizes.

• Pins from renting a shop now stay open after the rental of your first shop.

• Reduced the camera lag in Build Mode.

• Anything that can cause an error in Build Mode now has a marker showing what’s causing it.

Bugs

• Closing the painting menu will properly reset the hovered item.

• Reduced the customer spawn circle, as they could spawn out of bounds, making them immobile.

• The Floor Painter now selects the proper material when opened.

• Increased the latest work hour based on a store opening from 10:00 to 16:00.

• Going to work now looks at the proper day itself, and not the hours from the day before.

• Added collision to the bank building.

• The Load Game year now shows in the proper format.

• Quick-Deleting in Build Mode will ask for confirmation first.

• Reviewed all product names and tweaked them to proper English.

• Fixed a bug that calculated the wrong price of an item when opening the store with a non-default currency.

• Windows now have proper weather effects on them.

• Corrected products that exceeded display limits.

• Resetting or confirming a build in Build Mode now properly closes all menus before making checks.

• Fixed a bug where you couldn't pause without increasing the game speed first.

• Corrected products that didn't fit in their respective boxes.

Balancing

• Increased staff sales efficiency.

• Decreased game attempts by 1 when inviting customers inside.

AI

• Your staff only go to the nearby location when idling.

• Increased navigation zone to support bigger stores. 

• Adjusted all AI to move with the new system.

• Overhauled the courier delivery method.

• Customers now prefer to look at the product in the room they are in, to avoid running back and forth.

• Increased navigation resolution.

Products

• Face Cleansers

• Sunscreen

• Body Lotion

• Self-Tan

• Scrub

• Deodorant

What’s Next

You’ve risen to the top, yes, but what’s next for King of Retail 2?

Let’s take another look at our roadmap. 

Next on the agenda, we have HQ Expansion & Multi Stores, and that’s where my attention will be. The goal is to let you centralise your retail operation, running multiple stores simultaneously, promoting floor managers, and becoming the true CEO you were born to be. 

This will be a sizable undertaking, of course, so I’m planning to roll it out through smaller, more frequent updates, as the elements will connect quite seamlessly over time, which will be great for getting new content into your hands more quickly.

For other notes, don’t forget to swing by the King of Retail 2 Official Discord, where you’ll be the first to see in-progress updates; I’m frequently hanging out in there, too, and will aim to answer your questions when I catch them.

Plus, on Friday, I do a devstream over at my Twitch Channel, where you can watch me working on updates. I tend to answer questions there, too, so swing by on a Friday and let’s chat.

With all that being said, I’ll leave you to jump into the Rise to the Top update! 

Keep the feedback coming, let me know how you’re feeling about this one, and until next time…

Have a great sale.

• Daniel