Core Loop
The smallest action chain you repeat in every Kairosoft game: put resources in, wait for output, convert that output into new resources. Reading the loop tells you where the money should go.
Every game guide on this site opens with it, because Kairosoft games rarely differ in the loop itself — they differ in the one constraint bolted onto it. Hot Springs Story gates expansion behind popularity and the Guidebook Rank; Dungeon Village charges upkeep on every building and punishes sprawl; Ninja Village forces three-turn battles and punishes raw stat stacking. Optimise for the wrong constraint and a guide run turns into pointless number shuffling.
Common misreadIt is not a "how to play" blurb to skim past. It is a priority list: the slowest link in the loop is the thing you should be fixing.
Also called: core gameplay loop, game rhythm
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/
Guidebook Rank
In the Hot Springs Story games, the overall grade measuring how well your facilities and guest types cover the game's checklist — and the main gate to new content.
It is not a scoreboard, it is an unlock gate: below the next rank threshold, later facilities simply do not appear in the build menu. Early on, the optimal play is usually not "max what you already have" but "hit the rank that unlocks the next tier" — the two goals regularly conflict. Rank conditions per tier are listed in the goals table of our Hot Springs Story and Hot Springs Story 2 guides.
Common misreadDo not confuse it with the end-of-game Final Rating. The rating is a score settled at the end; the Guidebook Rank climbs throughout the run.
Also called: guide rank
Appears in: Hot Springs Story, Hot Springs Story 2
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/Hot_Springs_Story
Golden Week
The in-game holiday rush: guest traffic and income spike well above normal days, making it the key window for paying back construction and pushing ranks.
Golden Week is a real Japanese holiday cluster — a run of national holidays from late April into early May — so the term can be opaque to players outside Japan. In Kairosoft games it simply means the recurring peak season. Treat these peaks as anchors for your construction schedule: a facility finished just before a peak multiplies its payback; finished just after, it idles through a full cycle. When stuck, audit how many peaks your schedule has missed before touching any numbers.
Also called: GW, holiday rush
Appears in: Hot Springs Story, Hot Springs Story 2
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/Hot_Springs_Story
Compatibility
The bonus triggered by placing specific facilities or items together. It is the most overlooked multiplier in the series — and the one that widens gaps the most.
Compatibility bonuses are multipliers, not flat additions: a facility's own stats add up linearly, while a compatible pairing applies an extra rate on top. When floor space is tight, one working combo beats two premium facilities side by side with none.
This site lists 42 combos for Hot Springs Story, 55 for Hot Springs Story 2 and 366 for Game Dev Story — all filterable and searchable on each game's Combos page.
Common misreadA combo list is not a "most expensive is best" ranking. Some cheap pairings out-rate a pricey standalone; compare output per equal cost, not absolute values.
Also called: synergy, combo bonus, pairing bonus
Appears in: Hot Springs Story, Hot Springs Story 2, Game Dev Story
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/Hot_Springs_Story
Bath Effects
In the Hot Springs Story games, the guest-preference effect attached to each bath type — it decides which guests come and how long they stay.
Bath effects target guest types, not raw numbers. A bath that appeals to elderly guests is wasted unless the surrounding facilities also serve that crowd: an effect with no matching guests might as well not exist.
Our Hot Springs Story 2 data lists 10 bath effects and Hot Springs Story lists 4, each with the materials needed to set it up. Note that Compatibility and Bath Effects are different systems: compatibility is a facility-to-facility relation, bath effects are a property of the bath itself.
Also called: spring effects, bath bonuses
Appears in: Hot Springs Story, Hot Springs Story 2
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/Hot_Springs_Story
Upkeep
The fixed cost deducted every month (every cycle) for each facility you have built. Easy to ignore, and it quietly eats your cash flow.
This is the classic failure mode in Dungeon Village: players build whenever they can afford it, but upkeep grows linearly with facility count while income caps out with visitor flow. Hence the illusion of "more buildings, poorer ledger".
Rule of thumb: if net cash flow stays negative for several cycles in a row, the problem is not income — you have more facilities than your traffic can carry.
Common misreadDo not judge health by total assets. Rising assets with negative cash flow is textbook over-expansion.
Also called: maintenance cost, maintenance fee
Appears in: Dungeon Village
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/Dungeon_Village
New Game Plus
After clearing a game, some resources or data carry over into the next playthrough. What exactly carries over differs per title, and it changes whether you should hoard or spend.
Assumed carry-overs are the most common wrong guess in this series. Confirmed to have some form of it: Dungeon Village, Ninja Village and High Sea Saga — but the exact items (levels, gear, funds, catalogue) must be checked per game; our guides note what has been verified so far.
Strategic consequence: if a resource carries over, spending it all in the final stretch of a run is a mistake; if it does not, liquidate before the credits roll.
Also called: NG+, second playthrough, carry-over
Appears in: Dungeon Village, Ninja Village, High Sea Saga
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/
Data Transfer
The carry-over mechanic of High Sea Saga. The community wiki uses the literal name "Data Transfer" rather than the more familiar "New Game Plus".
Same family of mechanic as NG+ elsewhere — progress brought into the next playthrough — just named differently on the wiki and in-game. When other guides talk about "NG+" for High Sea Saga, this is what they mean. What transfers has been partially verified; see our High Sea Saga guide for the confirmed list.
Also called: NG+, save transfer
Appears in: High Sea Saga
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/High_Sea_Saga
Final Rating
The grade awarded when a game settles, computed from several weighted factors such as revenue, rank and coverage.
Kairosoft has never published the scoring formulas. This site only lists components and thresholds that have a traceable source — where none exists we mark the row "to verify" instead of inventing a formula. If you see a scoring formula quoted to several decimal places somewhere else, treat it as unverified until a source shows up.
Common misreadMaxing one stat does not max the grade. With multiple weighted factors, a weak component usually drags the total down more than a strong one lifts it.
Also called: end rating, clear grade
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/
Year-end Results
The settlement at the end of each business cycle (usually a year): income, expenses and the period's grade. It is the only official verdict on how the cycle went.
In the results screen, the two numbers worth reading are net cash flow and new unlocks — not total revenue. High revenue with negative net flow means you are burning reserves; no new unlocks means the cycle's spending bought no progress.
Also called: settlement, annual results
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/
Three-Turn Battles
Ninja Village's battle structure: every fight must be decided within a fixed number of turns — fail to break through in time and you lose.
This constraint is the fulcrum the whole game balances on: it turns "stack numbers" into "stack output per turn". With turns fixed, pure defensive or attrition setups lose to the clock, while burst setups can win even with lower total output.
That is why our Ninja Village guide keeps calling Strategy the core multiplier — with the same units, different tactic levels can shift the damage you deal inside three turns by a full tier.
Also called: 3-turn battles, turn limit
Appears in: Ninja Village
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/Ninja_Village
Strategy
In Ninja Village, the party-wide multiplier applied on top of individual unit stats — one of the heaviest factors in damage.
Strategy multiplies; unit stats add. That asymmetry is why raising Strategy first, then stats wins most battles at equal investment — and why the Ninja Village guide treats tactics as the core multiplier rather than a side stat.
Also called: tactics, strategy bonus
Appears in: Ninja Village
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/wiki/Ninja_Village
Kairosoft
The Japanese studio behind the pixel-art management series this site covers. English releases largely carry "Story" titles such as Game Dev Story or Hot Springs Story.
Fans colloquially bundle the games into one "series", but that is a fan label, not an official one — Kairosoft has no such series naming, and several titles do not include "Story" at all. This site keeps one page per game under Games, slugged by the official English titles.
Also called: Kairosoft games, Kairo Co., Ltd
Source
https://kairosoft.net/
Where names and numbers come from
Every name and number on this site is transcribed from a named source — mostly the community wiki kairosoft.wiki.gg, cross-checked against official store listings where they exist.
Kairosoft does not publish official data sheets, so the practical sources are:
- The community wiki (kairosoft.wiki.gg) — the most complete structured data available; tables are transcribed row by row and the page URL is kept on every data page.
- Official store listings (Steam, app stores) — authoritative for titles and descriptions, but they cover only a fraction of in-game terms.
- Our own screenshots and runs — marked as such, and limited to what the game itself displays.
When a value exists nowhere we can verify, the row says so instead of guessing. If you spot a wrong value, the About page lists a corrections address — fixes land with the source noted.
Also called: data sources, sourcing
Source
https://kairosoft.wiki.gg/