The Pyraplex

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 58 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income, and Epic Astro Story established a Simulation style akin to games like Sim City, where you’re building out a town or settlement.

The Pyraplex originally released on mobile devices in 2012, then saw a port to Nintendo Switch in 2019, PlayStation 4 in 2020, and PC in 2023. And this one is definitely in the Hot Springs Story vein of creating something to appease visitors and get them to spend more money. In fact, it is extremely similar to Mega Mall Story, in a way that’s both bizarre and kinda’ endearing.

This is because the pyramid you’re constructing isn’t a grandiose tomb for a pharaoh, but more of an ancient Egyptian-themed shopping mall, with everything in the mall reinterpreted to be more “ancient Egypt”-y. What would have been a hardware store and a pet shop in Mega Mall Story are now a stonemason hammer shop and a snake charmer (it’s unclear if customers are buying the snakes themselves, private performances, or snake extermination services).

To its credit, The Pyraplex isn’t just Mega Mall Story with an Egyptian-themed coat of paint. There are new mechanics at play here, such as the need to manage individual workers, to mine materials from a quarry and have them transported to places being constructed, to expel snake infestations, and to please the monthly pyramid magazine by keeping your pyramid properly pyramid-shaped. It’s often a silly way of shoehorning in the theme, but it is at least different.

However, those differences aren’t always an improvement. The quarry element is a fun addition, but the inability to instruct workers to deliver stone blocks to a specific place means that they’ll often take them from the quarry to the supply rather than to a new shop you’re building, or they’ll carry more stone than they need, necessitating a trip back to return the excess supply. Also, the game isn’t clear enough on how you start getting customers in the first place, leading to dwindling funds unless you just happen to qualify for the condition and select the right menu option to be “awarded” the ability to attract customers. And all of this is on top of it not always being clear what a new shop or facility does due to the way the game tries to push its theme. And unlike Mega Mall Story, moving around your shops and facilities comes with a fee every time you do it now, as well as the need to wait as the facilities are rebuilt in the new location.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals, here presented in a side-scrolling view much like Mega Mall Story had, paired with repetitive chiptune music and sound effects. Apart from the forgettable and somewhat annoying synthesized music, everything about this presentation is really endearing, though by this point we’ve seen more or less the same thing in numerous other Kairosoft games.

Overall, I think that The Pyraplex is a creative re-imagining of the Mega Mall Story formula, but it feels like it’s trying too hard to make its Egyptian theme fit the prior game’s framework, and the result is a Management Simulation that often doesn’t make sense, and at times has mechanics that will bog things down or frustrate players. There’s still a fun game here, but most of what this game does that’s entertaining was already done better in Mega Mall Story.

tl;dr – The Pyraplex is a Management Simulation where players manage the building of a pyramid, which in this game acts as an ancient Egyptian-themed shopping mall. This game does put an effort into trying to transform the Mega Mall Story formula into something different, but many of these new elements detract more than they add to the experience, and the result is a game that it’s hard to recommend to anyone but those most enthusiastic about Egypt-themed stuff – if that’s not especially appealing to you, you’re better off sticking with Mega Mall Story.

Grade: C+

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