#oneaday Day 860: Kairobot

Have you played any of the games by Kairosoft on iOS and Android devices? If not, you really should. They’re quite remarkable little experiences, all the more noteworthy for fitting surprisingly deep gameplay into less than 10MB in most cases. This is a big benefit for those of you who habitually fill your phone and/or tablet device with all manner of crap games that you never play.

Kairosoft’s games are business sims/strategy games at heart. All of them feature adorable pixel art and dreadful MIDI music. Most of them involve attempting to make as much money as possible over the course of a fixed period of time which varies depending on the title. Some are almost identical to one another, others take slightly different approaches.

All are utterly bewildering the first time you play them.

Most players’ first experience with this little Japanese software company’s work tends to be with their breakout hit Game Dev Story which, as the title suggests, sees the player running a fledgling game development company over the course of twenty in-game years. As the game progresses, players develop their staff, produce new games, try to woo the public and even have the opportunity to develop their own game console. Throughout, knowing tips of the hat are given to the games industry with pun-based names and not-quite-real game systems coming on to the market and acting much like their real-life counterparts. Develop for the Game Boy equivalent, for example, and you’ll be on to a winner. Decide to support the Virtual Boy equivalent and you may find that your sales aren’t quite what you expect.

Basic gameplay in Game Dev Story is pretty straightforward. Through a series of simple menus, you tell your minions what to do and keep a careful eye on your finances. What’s interesting about it (and all Kairosoft’s other titles, for that matter) is how much is going on beneath the surface. Markets are being simulated; seasonal growth and decline is taken into account; real-world trends form a key part of the game. On your first run-through, you may not discover everything the game has to offer. On each subsequent runthrough, you find out more until you’re making ridiculous amounts of money with each one of your blockbusters.

The most recent Kairosoft title I’ve tried is an Android title known as Cafeteria Nipponica. This, as the name suggests, is a restaurant management game where it’s up to the player to take between one and three restaurants to the very top of their game. This is achieved by hiring staff, levelling them up, researching new dishes and, occasionally, sending staff members out into the fields to look for ingredients and “treasure”. I haven’t got my head around everything the game is doing at the moment, but if nothing else, seeing little pixel people running around making a restaurant work is most entertaining. Like most of the company’s other titles, a lot of concepts are treated in a rather “abstract” manner, and so long as you don’t go in expecting a literal simulation of how a restaurant actually works, you’ll have a blast.

If you’ve read my previous post How to Play Pocket Academy, you’ll know that success in these games is sometimes quite hard to come by, and it’s quite easy to mess things up beyond all recognition. That’s okay, though, because the game remains so unerringly polite about the whole thing throughout that you can’t feel too bad even as your money spirals into the red more and more with each passing month.

In short, then, if you’re looking for something to occupy your time on the toilet/bus that isn’t Angry Birds, then almost anything by our Japanese friends here is certainly worth a look. While they may not be the cheapest mobile games out there, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. They’ll provide you with a ton of entertainment for about the price of a single Starbucks coffee. And you can’t complain at that, really. That’s just good business.

#oneaday Day 550: How to Play Pocket Academy

After posting a lengthy comment on yesterday’s post, I figured that I’d share what I’ve discovered about playing Kairosoft’s Pocket Academy with a view to potentially making the start of the game a little easier for those of you who haven’t tried it yet. So here we go.

The First Few Months

You’ll start your new school with a few basic facilities, one teacher and a couple of students, one of whom you design and name yourself. Don’t be tempted to build facilities or level up your teacher to begin with, even if they come to you and very politely inform you that their friends get more training than they do. The reason for this is that facilities cost money each month for upkeep, and each level up for a teacher raises their salary by 20%.

Instead, your initial activities should focus around getting your students’ abilities up to snuff through special classes, and performing Challenges to raise tuition.

Special classes cost one of the three types of Research Points to perform, and each will raise students’ grades in one or two subjects. As you progress through the game, more classes (and more effective classes) will become available. To acquire Research Points, it’s just a case of waiting — they come either from teachers using facilities (tap on a facility to see which type of points it provides), from students talking to each other (randomly determined) or special events such as those which occur in the summer and the fall (each event is tied to a particular type of Research Points).

Challenges cost money to take on, but succeeding in them increases your tuition by $20-30 per student. You can perform up to two successful Challenges per month. Failing one doesn’t count as one of these two — and in fact, failing a challenge provides you with Research Points, so if you have an excess of cash, this can be a good way of quickly bumping up your stocks. Passing a Challenge is determined partly by random chance, partly by the participating student’s Intelligence and Attitude stats, and partly by their grades. Raise grades with special classes and keep an eye on their Int/Att scores as they use the facilities.

At the end of each semester, there’s a test. Student grades will be tallied and the school will be given a rating and a ranking. The higher the rating/ranking, the more money you get, so it’s in your interests to ensure each class’ grade average is as high as possible — tap on a classroom to see the whole class’ average as well as students’ individual grades.

Building Up

As you pass Challenges and pass other milestones, reports in the school newspaper will be published, increasing your potential catchment area. As this happens, a flow of Transfer Students will join your school. Each will bring an entrance fee with them, and some will also offer a monetary gift from their parents. The more students you have, the more tuition you get per month.

Once your classrooms are full or the flow of Transfer Students stops, that’s a signal that it’s time to hire a new teacher. Pick one with a reasonable salary but a good range of stats, particularly those which aren’t covered by your existing staff member. Teachers’ “grades” determine how much benefit students get from the classes they hold at the start of each semester as well as the special classes — each time you hold a special class, one of your teachers is picked randomly to hold it.

Levelling up a teacher requires Research Points — the exact type and amount depends on the individual teacher. Gaining a level gives the teacher a 20% pay rise and 30-90 Education Points to spend on their “grades”. Try and specialise each teacher one at a time — all grades carry equal weight, so there’s no need to get Eng/Ma/Sci up first, whatever the National Curriculum might tell you. Pick one and try and get it up to 100, then move on to another.

Budget carefully — at the end of each month, you’ll see a brief rundown of how much you spent on facility upkeep, how much you spent on teacher salaries and how much income you got from students. Ideally the latter figure should be higher than the former two combined. If you want to check your budget in detail, go into the menu, tap School > School Info then tap on the info window that pops up.

Creating Spots

Once you’re making a healthy profit each month, you can look at expanding your school. When building new facilities, the most efficient thing to do is combine groups of three facilities together into Popular Spots. These then get a bonus which they also provide to surrounding facilities, making them more effective. The more a facility is used, the better it gets, too — tap on a facility to see how many more times it has to be used before it will level up.

Known Spot combinations are listed under Lists > Spot Guide. Over time, you’ll unlock more “recipes” but not all are listed. Here’s a partial list:

Relaxing Spot: Azalea, Grass, Bench
Waiting Spot: Bulletin Board, Big Rock, Rest Room
Power Spot: Well, Woods, Grass
Garden Spot: Grass, Field, Water Fountain
Art Spot: Art Room, Music Room, Misc Room
Study Spot: Principal Room, Library, AV Room
Spooky Spot: Music Room, Lab, Incinerator
Friend Spot: Water Fountain, Nurse’s Room, Lounge
Date Spot: Tennis Court, Woods, Library
Exercise Spot: Running track, B-Ball Court, Vending Room
Jealousy Spot: Incinerator, Cafeteria, Home Ec Room
Election Spot: Principal’s Office, Teacher Room, Lounge
Homey Spot: Nurse’s Room, Home Ec Room, Rest Room
Shopping Spot: Snack Store, Tiny Mart, Cafeteria
Meat Spot: Pig Room, Cow Room, Cafeteria
Water Spot: Water tile, Rest Room, Well
Cooking Spot: Incinerator, Home Ec Room, Water Fountain

In order to create some of these Spots, you’ll need to research the relevant facilities. To do this, pop up the menu, go into Admin > Research. Each facility costs a certain amount of money and Research Points to unlock, then each will take a period of time to create. You can’t research everything initially — more facilities will unlock as time passes. You’ll know when you can research something new by a pop-up saying you’ve got a “new request”. When looking at the Spot Guide, “Can Build” means that you have the capability to research all the necessary facilities, whereas “Cannot Build” means that you won’t be able to research or build at least some of the facilities for a while yet.

Career Guidance and Graduation

When your students reach their third year, you need to start paying attention to their career paths, as this will determine how much money you get when they graduate in month 3 of their last year. Use Lists > Student List to view their grades, stats and success rate in their career. Anyone with a yellow success rate (80%+) is likely to succeed, so you can leave them be in most cases. For anyone else, you may want to consider giving them some career guidance.

Students with no career planned will become part-timers upon graduation. This has a 100% success rate but returns a poor amount of money, so if you have the time and resources, advise them on an appropriate career.

To give career guidance, you need to use Research Points to create a Career Change item from the Admin > Items menu. Then tap on a student either on the screen or in the Student List and choose Use Item to apply it to them. You’ll see a range of careers, success rates and salaries — pick one with a good chance of success and decent salary. You’ll get an award of 5% of the total salaries of all your graduating students when they leave, so it’s in your interests to get them into as highly-paid jobs as possible.

Other Ways of Making Money

Certain facilities, such as the Vending Room and Snack Store, gain you money whenever students or teachers use them. This will provide a small income.

Fields will provide a slow but steady income, too. Build fields where students and teachers can reach them, next to paths. They’ll plant and harvest crops automatically at regular intervals, providing money on harvest.

Animal rooms provide income in a similar manner to fields, but you can build fewer of them.

All facilities are made more effective and provide more money depending on the amount of Spirit they have — Spirit is raised by planting trees, flowers and other nice things around them.

Where Now?

It’s up to you after that. From hereon you’ll have a steady string of things vying for your attention — do you prioritise your third years’ grades? Research? Build? Up to you — but remember you’ve only got until your tenth year to record a high score.

If you find your supply of transfer students drying up and your income dwindling, hire more teachers. Four teachers can handle six full classes — you’ll need to build another Teachers’ Room if you want to hire more.

Hope that’s helped. I haven’t covered everything by any means, but that sums up everything I’ve figured out about the game so far.

#oneaday Day 549: Kairo! Kairo! Kairo!

I’ve been playing a couple of Kairosoft games on iPhone recently — specifically, Game Dev Story, which most gamers with an iPhone have probably heard of, and Pocket Academy which, as a recent release, may be a little more obscure.

These games, while initially seemingly slightly impenetrable, are great, and bring to mind strategy games of the past, complete with super-adorable pixel art. Specifically, stuff of the SimCity ilk, where there were no set goals, no Achievements, no “win conditions”, even, save the ones you set for yourself. Unlike SimCity, Game Dev Story and Pocket Academy do end after 20 years of in-game time (you can keep playing but your scores aren’t recorded after that) so you do have something to strive for, but other than that, you’re on your own.

I hadn’t realised how long it was since we’ve had a game like that until I started playing them in earnest. Do you remember the start of a game of Sim City? “Here’s a blank bit of land. Off you go.” No tutorial. No “you should probably build this first”, no initial setup. Blank canvas, palette of Stuff to Build. Begin building, build too much, lose all money, fail. Try again, pace self better, experiment with big thing, fail. Start again, pace self even better, don’t build big thing until you really need it, slowly start making money. Repeat until map full.

Contrast this with one of the modern equivalents of the genre, which is the Facebook/phone-based city-building game. I tried CityVille on iPhone for a little while just to see if there was any strategy or experimentation involved whatsoever. There wasn’t. It was an endless string of objectives which theoretically I could have been free to ignore were it not for the fact that you unlock things to build painfully slowly by levelling up like in an RPG — and the most efficient way to level up is to complete said objectives. This is, to misquote Aristotle, “balls”.

Now we come to Kairosoft’s titles. While they don’t quite give you the completely empty canvas to start with, the tutorial is rudimentary at best and barely explains the basics of gameplay — the rest of it is up to you to discover. Why should you level up your staff? Why should you pump money into advertising? What effect does having couples in your school have? Why does a combination of a tennis court, a tree and a library make my students happier?

I don’t know the answers to all of those questions… yet. And like in SimCity, my first attempt at Pocket Academy saw me hire too many teachers too quickly and send my school spiralling into debt that it wouldn’t be able to recover from because I didn’t have the capital to build the things that would make it more attractive to new students. So I had to swallow my pride and start again. Game Dev Story is a bit easier — there’s always a means of getting your team out of trouble with some contract work, for example — but still challenging if you want your company to reach the upper echelons of awesomeness.

The nature of these games puts them somewhat at odds with what appeals to a stereotypical iPhone gamer, who wants something that they can pick up and play without having to take time to learn it. The beauty of Kairosoft’s games is that they can be played for a few short minutes while waiting for a bus, but similarly they can be indulged in for hours at a time if you so please, too.