Last year’s Game Dev Story from developer Kairosoft was a smash hit on iOS devices, propelling the Japanese studio in to worldwide popularity. The game’s cute and colorful pixel art, combined with a simple-yet-addictive infrastructure for gameplay, won many gamers over and stole hundreds of precious hours from our lives. Now, Kairosoft has released the latest in their ongoing iOS series, Mega Mall Story, which contains the same enslaving formula as one might expect. But despite a similar outer shell, this cutesy mall-simulator provides enough fresh hooks to keep gamers entertained for hours.

Mega Mall Story’s objective is simple: As the owner of a shopping mall, you must take your citadel of consumerism from its humble beginnings to a five-star, multistoried shopping paradise within 15 years. New stores become available to build as you (literally) win over the hearts of your customers. These hearts can spent to upgrade your existing businesses, increasing their overall quality and the amount of inventory they can stock. Players are also given the option to invest in their local neighborhood by building homes, offices or parks. This is a sure-fire method to obtaining regular customers to your mall, which in turn increases your profits.

The placement of individual stores within the mall also matters, as placing certain businesses next to each other creates “combos.” When a combo is formed, the overall quality and efficiency of each store increases significantly. This can actually become a bit of a pain later in the game, as real estate within your complex becomes sparse with the large number of different stores available to unlock and create.

This is a common feeling throughout the career of Mega Mall Story, as there are a large amount of different systems implemented, but not enough resources or room to utilize them how you might want. It took me almost an entire 15 year cycle to finally understand the proper method to balance your cash and heart spending, and the in-game hints offer very little clarification on the more advanced features.

But, despite a bit of a learning curve and some confusing systems, Mega Mall Story still manages to steal your focus for hours at a time. The repetitive nature of the game makes it easy to pick up and play, and it contains some highly effective hooks that instill an almost-Pavlovian reaction to them. For example, there is a popularity meter on the bottom of your screen that slowly increases through your own advertisements or awards earned. Once it reaches 100, you enter Fever Mode, which causes all of your customers to go on binge shopping sprees, earning you tons of cash and hearts in a short period of time. It can be difficult to stop playing when you can see the next Mall Fever creeping up relatively soon, as the sensation of the falling confetti and hyper-active music can be very persuasive.

The game also retains a portion of the witty humor from previous entries in the Story series, but the comedy this time derives mostly from the names of your customers. It’s unfortunate that it lacks some of the tongue-in-cheek charm of Game Dev, but I suppose poking fun at the shopping mall industry isn’t nearly as humorous as video game developers.

If you are looking for an iPhone game that will keep you occupied for hours, there are few experiences on iOS that can accomplish what Mega Mall Story does. However, if you wish to retain your normal sleep patterns or any shred of productivity in your life, you might want to cautiously avoid this game until you are properly ready for it.