Kairosoft is a Japanese video game developer that specializes in small simulation games. Despite looking like sprite-based Eastern RPGs, the games are usually very vast and complex, with many mechanics and strategies to discover as you delve in further. They made their English debut with Game Dev Story in 2010, which met huge success from casual players, proper gamers, and even game developers across the world. Since then, they've kept localizing their games over the iOS and Android platforms. As of 2022, Kairosoft releases PC ports of its mobile games on Steam, with Game Dev Story among its first games to debut.
Localized works include:
- Game Dev Story
- Beastie Bay
- Dungeon Village
- Epic Astro Story
- Grand Prix Story
- Hot Springs Story
- Magazine Mogul
- Mega Mall Story
- Ninja Village
- Oh! Edo Towns
- Pocket Academy
- Pocket League Story
- Pocket League Story 2
- Pocket Stables
- The Pyraplex
- Sushi Spinnery
- Venture Towns
- World Cruise Story
- Anime Studio Story
- Pocket Arcade Story
The company themselves are examples of:
- Follow the Leader: Not surprisingly, Kairosoft has been subject to a number of developers attempting to follow their success. One particularly notable developer goes as far as to use the same naming convention.
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Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The Chinese market absolutely adores Kairosoft games
, if the linked post is any indication. Many Chinese fans were shocked that Kairosoft would be involved with a scandal of this grade and actually rallied with Kairosoft to condemn the thief of their IP. - Strictly Formula: A lot of their simulations are this trope:
- As noted above, most simulations have the naming convention of "X Y Story"
- Simulations only run for 20 years.
- The simulated companies only have a maximum of 8 employees, a secretary and the boss- Modeled after their own company's structure.
- Only Six Faces: They tend to recycle their character designs across games. Also, always appearing in a game of their works are a masked luchador, an Arab Sheik, a chimpanzee, a bear and their mascot, Kairobot.
Their works include examples of:
- Arab Oil Sheikh: King Ackbar.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Mimi Meers from Pocket Stables. She wears actual bunny ears, but has rather good stats.
- I Have Many Names: The characters may reappear across multiple games, but their name is inconsistent across different games. For example, Mr. X reappears in Pocket Stables as Dyna Mike.
- Just One More Turn: A good number of reviews for their games start with some statement of how the review ended up late since the reviewer lost track of time.
- Masked Luchador: Mr. X, one of the reoccurring characters, remains a mystery through all of his appearances.
- New Game Plus: After each games Time Limit, it will save your score at that point and the game will technically end. From that point, you can continue the current game and keep going to see how good you can get, or you can start a new game and have certain unlockables available from the get-go.
- Only Six Faces: The games by the company very clearly combines a limited amount of heads and bodies to create more characters.
- Retraux: The graphics on games by the company are designed to look like those from the early 16-bit era, specifically similar to graphics from most earlier SNES games.
- Running Gag: Certain out-of-place characters become recruitable/move to your town during all of Kairosoft's works.
- Sequel First: Our Pocket Academy is the second School Sim game. The first wasn't localized until 2019, as Pocket Academy ZERO.
- Simulation Game: Virtually all games consist of some level of management or facility/town creation.
- Theme Naming: Until Pocket Academy, all the games localized titles were a variation of 'X Y Story'. Grand Prix brought it back, and it followed with World Cruise and Epic Astro.
- Oh! Edo Towns and successor Venture Towns. Dungeon Village and Ninja Village too.
- Underground Monkey: While the environment changes by the game, the same character sprites are reused often, sometimes with clothing appropriate for the game. For example, the first minion in most games is a pink-pigtailed girl, showing up as anything from a sushi chef to a ninja farmer.
