Mega Mall Story — FAQ

Check three things, in this order.

One: are all three buildings placed? This game uses three-building combos. The Hot Springs Story series uses two, so habit trips people up here.

Two: are they adjacent on the same floor? Adjacent means sharing an edge. A diagonal corner does not count, and splitting them across two floors does not count.

Three: are they the exact buildings named? A combo names specific stores. A different store of the same category will not substitute. The combo page lists every building by name for exactly this reason.

Two separate bonuses stack.

The universal bonus depends only on the floor band: 12F-10F gives +50 Rep, 9F-7F +40, 6F-4F +25, 3F-1F +10, B1F-B2F +20 and B3F +30.

The per-store bonus depends on the store. 67 stores each have particular floors where they earn extra Quality or Rep.

Read the per-store bonus first, then the universal band. A store whose exclusive floor is B1F will lose that bonus if you move it to 12F for the +50, and the trade may not be worth it. Both bonuses also stack on top of a combo.

There is no single answer, and any guide that gives you one number is guessing.

12F-10F has the highest universal bonus (+50 Rep), but a store with an exclusive bonus on a lower floor will earn more there. The right process is: look up the store's own floor row on the Layout page, shortlist the floors it lists, and among those pick the one with the highest universal band.

For stores with no exclusive floor, put them on 12F-10F.

Invest in housing, parks and offices first. The community wiki says this explicitly and the arithmetic supports it.

Every store and every floor carries fixed upkeep per cycle. Revenue depends on how many customers actually walk in. Adding floors raises upkeep immediately and raises revenue only once traffic grows into the new space.

A concrete test: if your net cash per cycle is flat or falling, stop building and put money into the population lines until traffic rises.

Store upgrades, not new store unlocks, in the early and middle game.

Upgrade perks get easier as a store levels up, so the same Hearts buy a stronger perk at a higher level. Unlocking new stores adds combo options, which matters but compounds later.

One more thing that changes the maths: stores you unlock carry into New Game+, but facilities and services do not. So late in your first run, Hearts spent on store unlocks are not wasted, while Hearts spent on facility upgrades are.

Quality, and the wiki recommends pushing it toward 100.

The distinction is simple. Quality affects whether a customer wants to buy at all. Stock only affects whether you have enough when they do. Early on, the constraint is interest, not inventory.

Add Stock only when you can see a specific store selling out every single cycle.

Because every store charges upkeep each cycle whether it earns or not. A mall with many low-traffic stores shows a healthy total value and a shrinking cash balance at the same time.

This is the classic over-expansion state. The fix is not a new store; it is raising traffic to the stores you already have (population investment, advertising, a popularity event) or removing what you cannot fill.

Two levers that are documented: Quality and population investment.

High Quality stores pull in regular customers, which is why the wiki tells you to push Quality early. Investment in Residential, Park and Office lines changes which kinds of customers appear at all, and some customers only show up after specific stores exist.

Regular customers are also the source of some store unlocks: several buildings in the database are listed as a gift from a named regular customer rather than a purchase.

Star rating gates content in two ways: higher stars unlock additional stores and floors, and some plan purchases in the Pumpkin Shop require a minimum star level before you are allowed to buy them.

That second part is the one people miss. A plan you can technically afford may still be locked behind a star threshold, so check the unlock condition on the store's card, not just its price.

The game tallies your score in year 16.

The factors that feed the score are known: revenue, star rating, number of stores, and how much of the mall you filled. The weights are not published by Kairosoft, and the community wiki flags the calculation as missing.

We do not print a formula here. Percentages with no traceable source are guesses, and a wrong formula is worse than none.

Unlocked stores carry over. Facilities and services do not.

That asymmetry should change how you spend Hearts late in run one. Store unlocks are permanent progress; facility upgrades are rented for one run.

No, and the difference is large. The sequel has 163 structures against 86 here, 43 combos against 31, 20 floors against 12, and adds plan costs, footprint sizes, customer motivation and staff skills as separate systems.

The sequel does not have the universal floor bonus table this game has. Its floor data sits in the structures and combos tables instead. So advice does not transfer cleanly in either direction.

Mega Mall Story is by Kairosoft, first released in 2011, and it is available on mobile, Switch, PlayStation, Steam and Xbox.

Kairosoft has published a list of titles that have restrictions on streaming and video content, so check that list before you record or monetise footage.

Structure and combo tables are transcribed from the community wiki at kairosoft.wiki.gg, which is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Every entry on the database and combo pages links to the specific wiki page it came from.

Where the wiki has no answer, the page says so. We do not fill gaps with estimates, and we do not print percentages we cannot trace. If you spot an error, the contact address is in the footer.