"Shopping Street" is a free online flash game at Kongregate.com. It's like a tower defense game but instead of killing things you set up stores and collect money from customers. This general strategy shows you how to beat the game in case you're stumped. It is not the be-all end-all strategy, but it will get the job done.

Note: Since the levels get harder, this is for the higher levels where each building type is allowed. You can beat the last levels of New York with this strategy.

This game is pretty straightforward. The customers enter the left side of the screen and exit the right side. They each have a certain supply of money and your goal is to get as much of their money as possible. You do this by setting up shops. They will enter all shops that they approach provided it isn't already full of customers.

To me it seems the best strategy is to place the shops that have the fastest turnover (how long a customer stays in each shop), the highest prices (how much money you receive from each customer), and the highest capacity (how many customers the shop will hold) furthest to the left. Since each customer has a limited supply of cash, we want to take their money as quickly as we can and make room for more customers.

Here is the order that I place the stores, from left to right.

1. Electronics store
2. Market
3. Jewelry shop
4. Furniture store
   
5. Pet shop
6. Boutique
7. Toy Store
8. Restaurant

Since you can't purchase these stores in order, here is my general strategy.

First, set up a pet shop 5th place from the left and put a bench in front of it. The bench is cheap and stalls some of your customers.

Now build a boutique and a toy store, from left to right. It shouldn't really matter the order that you build or upgrade. Once you have these three buildings, your next priority is to build an electronics store. I don't really have a set strategy for building newsstands, benches, advertisements, etc. I don't think they make a huge difference, so I just kind of mix and match. If you want, just copy what I did in these images.

Bus stop- I usually add the bus stop around day 8 or 9. This should be a priority once you can handle more customers.

Build an electronics store.  Your goal is to build and upgrade both your electronics store and a market. I've added a jewelry store.

Get your supermarket in as soon as you can and upgrade the electronics store and market before upgrading the other buildings. I've added a restaurant here, but you don't have to as it's pretty much worthless.

You're on easy street now. As you get the cash, just upgrade the rest of your buildings to the maximum, the restaurant being your lowest priority. And that's it. Wait for the last day, and you should be able to beat any of the last levels.

Above is an unofficial list of the buildings to help you determine which upgrades to make. The "VERY SLOW", "SLOW", "FAST", and "VERY FAST" are based only on observation.

And that's about it. Like I said, none of this is written in stone, so if you've got a better strategy, let us know in the comment section. If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy how to beat Pillage the Village. Thanks for reading.