Minimal Mall

Minimal Mall shows how a shopping centre works: cars look for spaces, buses and trains bring people, shops sell. Everyone on the move is out shopping – those leaving carry bags. Sales today sit at the top; the ring shows sales per hour against a normal day.

You set how people get there and what is on offer: Parking spaces and Parking fee, Combined ticket, buses and trains, Advertising, Offers up to Mega sale, floor space by sector. Every move works at once – so you see how visitor flows, getting there and the offer fit together.

Get close and the roof opens: every block is a shop at its location according to OpenStreetMap, floor above floor, with visitors in between. Green is doing well, yellow tight, pink not doing well – all in the model.

Twelve big shopping centres in Germany, four of them in the Ruhr area, the others from Hamburg to Munich. The maps come from OpenStreetMap: buildings, roads, car parks, stops and shops with sector and floor, as far as mapped there; the depiction is simplified.

The model shows relationships, not forecasts. The game itself is in German and English. It runs right in your browser, on phones too: no download, no app, no sign-up.

Playful model. Visitors, sales and the status of the shops are model values, not real business figures. The names of the centres are for orientation only; there is no connection with the operators.

© OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)

• The centre keeps running. The top line guides you step by step: pull Advertising, check the parking, raise bus and rail frequency, click a shop. On first start an introduction shows where everything is; “?” or key I shows it again.
• “Getting there” tab: Parking spaces from 25 to 200 %, Parking fee from “free” upwards, Combined ticket from “off” to 80 %, Buses from “off” to 300 %, frequency of Metro & tram and Suburban rail where they exist. “All back to normal” resets everything.
• “Offers” tab: Advertising up to 200 %, Offers from “none” through “normal” and “Sale” to “Mega sale”, floor space by sector – Fashion, Food & drink, Electronics, Everyday, Leisure – from “all closed” to 200 %. “Slack”, “Normal” and “Peak” set everything at once.
• Advertising draws people in from the whole region. When the car parks are full, cars turn around – the visit and the sales are gone: if space runs short, it holds Advertising back. More spaces only help where they are missing.
• Sale and Mega sale bring more buyers and lift sales at once, but the receipt gets smaller. The Parking fee brings income, shown on the board; some drivers then come by bus and rail or not at all. The Combined ticket takes cars away and fills the platforms.
• In the model Fashion is the magnet: less space means empty units and fewer visitors. People who eat here stay longer. Electronics are a few big units with high sales, Everyday means regulars every week, Leisure is a reason to come.
• The Sales board on the right (key L) has three tabs. Sales: per hour and by sector, visitors, buyers, average receipt, effects against a normal day. Getting there: how people come, car parks, cars turned away, congestion. Shops: which do well and which do not, by sector and floor.
• Click or tap a shop: the card names sector and floor, its status in the model – “doing well”, “tight”, “not doing well” or “closed” – and its share of usual. “Close” and “Open” switch it. A train or bus takes the camera along.
• Views: Centre, Plan, Analysis and “Inside”: the roof opens and the camera moves to the building. Analysis has three lenses: Shops (height = sales, colour = status), Traffic (load on the approach roads) and Crowding (the ways in). Signs flag “Car park full”, “Jam”, “Crowding”.
• “Compare” (key C) shows the normal day: the same centre with the same demand, without your changes. Visitor numbers, sales and the status of each shop are model assumptions. They show relationships, not forecasts.
• Bottom right: sound (key M), day, evening and night (key N), overview (Home). In the bar below: pause and faster.
• With “Watch” on the title page the centre runs by itself: overview, entrance, a train, the open roof, “What if … there was a mega sale everywhere?”, then the matching lens, a bus, the analysis – then the next centre. “Click to play” hands it over to you.