In the sea of sim games revolving around building a medieval/pirate/sci-fi or any other kind of base and fighting enemies while at the same time trying of improving your base of operations Con Man is a very positive novel. Instead of building your city, or a castle, your main goal in Con Man: The Game is building a perfect con (not in a regular sense, Con Man is all about building a perfect fan convention). You’ll see many familiar faces from the con subculture (although their faces are recognizable, their names are different), build new booths, and making sure visitors are maximally satisfied.
Con Man might look like another pay-to-win title, but if incorporating right strategy, you’ll never have to spend a single cent on the game, while at the same time making your con the best there is. This isn’t easy since there are numerous ways the game indirectly guides you towards buying Comix (the premium in-game currency), but with the right source of info, Con Man won’t con you a single time into spending money in order to progress. Read our thorough Con Man: The Game guide and learn what to do in order to be the best convention manager out there.
1. Don’t Spend Comix On Everyday Maintenance
Comix are used for speeding up everything, from instantly constructing new booths to quickly finishing numerous simple tasks. But, if the timer goes under one minute, you can speed up tasks without spending a single Comix. This can be especially handy for tasks like emptying trash bins, fixing toilets or chasing away unwanted visitors.
Just follow the staff member that is working on a task and as soon as the timer goes under one minute, finish it by clicking on speeding up the task button. This way, your attendees won’t be dissatisfied since you’re gonna fix all problems relatively fast and not a single Comix will be spent.
2. Start Things Slow, Build Your Con Gradually
Con Man is all about constructing a perfect fan convention. And many players will fall into using a weak strategy of building many booths at once, bringing many fans but at the same time, you’ll need to build lots of utilities, like food stands, toilets, trash bins and such.
This isn’t the best strategy because you’ll soon be overrun with too many tasks needing to be done, malfunctions that’ll lower the happiness of your attendees, ultimately losing lots of money just in order of making your convention running smooth. A much better way is to start slow, with just a couple of booths, and one or two utilities. As you earn more money, invest wisely into new booths, and don’t build new utilities unless they are urgently needed. Just click on you level icon and there you’ll see what visitors want (more toilets or more food stands). Build new stuff only if they aren’t satisfied with the current situation.
Also, tend to build trash bins one next to another so you’ll always know where your staff is when on cleaning tasks.
This way you’ll always have enough staff members to solve problems, enough Comix which you can spend on better things (we will explain this a bit further into the guide), and enough money to buy new booths. Add new booths gradually so you always can deal with new fan desires.
3. Use Special Staff Actions Regularly
All staff (except maintenance) have special actions that’ll earn you extra experience. Be sure to use them regularly since most staff (like promotional or security staff) sit around doing nothing most of the time.
4. Buy Blue Con Bags
Con bags in Con Man give you large quantities of dollars and experience and a couple of Comix every time. You can collect one every six hours, and occasionally a random booth will grant you one after you collect earnings. But, since blue bags give you lots of experience and a couple of much needed Comix, it’s okay to buy them. The best way is to save $20,000 and buy five bags. This way you’ll spend your extra profit on experience and will have a regular Comix income.
Special orange bags can only be bought for Comix and they are too expensive for buying unless you’re ready to shell out some real money. But, from time to time, an orange bag will appear along money and experience when you collect booth earnings. They give you badges needed to level up your Superfans, as well as badges for higher tier Superfans (you have to collect five badges for the second-tier heroes), and much higher amount money and experience per one bag.
5. Spend Comix For Healing Superfans During Early Stages
Superfans are special fans appearing in Con Man that’ll protect you from alien invasions, and until you collect at least three of them, use Comix to heal them regularly. Until you collect three Superfans they will be vulnerable when fighting aliens, so it’s better to heal them then to lose them and pay lots of money in order for them to become available again.
6. Start A Fight As Soon As You Get Invaded
Aliens will invade your convention from time to time, it’s a regular thing in Con Man. If you don’t intervene instantly by clicking on them and starting a fight, your booths will be damaged and visitors will start running away. It’s crucial to commence a fight right after aliens appear, so you don’t have to spend lots of resources on fixing stuff and gaining fan’s support all over again.
7. Master The Combat In Con Man
Use Superfan attacks as soon as a shiny circle starts blinking under them; click on them every time a shield is pictured over them since they’ll take much more damage if an alien hits them while they are unshielded. And as soon as a special meter (a circle in the middle of the ring) is filled, swipe the finger from the ring to Superfan so he/she can use its special power. Special powers can kill an opponent with just one strike so use them often. And don’t let your Superfans receive maximum damage, activating their shields will prevent you from having massive money-induced headaches during the early game.
8. Don’t Panic If Visitors Become Unsatisfied
A satisfaction meter tells you how much fans are happy with your convention. It usually stays bright green, but can go red from time to time. For instance, if someone is puking all over the place, a toilet gets broken and at the same time all trash bins have to be emptied, satisfaction will go way down. But don’t panic, this is only temporary; after you fix all that, satisfaction will gradually become high again. So, don’t use Comix to speed up maintenance, just wait until there’s less than a minute to finish cleaning something and then speed it up without spending Comix. Hire additional maintenance staff so they can work faster, and don’t go on a Comix-spending spree. Remember, after you clean up the mess, everything will go back to normal and visitors will again start swarming through the gates.
9. Place Decorations Strategically
From time to time, as a special prize earned from con bags, Con Man will give you a random decoration. Decorations boost the amount of money and experience each booth produce. But, every decoration has a different-sized AoE (area of effect); it’s best to place decorations in a place from where they will influence the largest number of booths. Aside from that, make sure that affected booths generate a larger amount of money and experience since their bonus will be larger.
10. Hire A VIP As Soon As You Finish Your First VIP Booth
Convention Stars are the real stars of the show in Con Man. They’ll bring you various bonuses, from boosting the food consumed by the fans to chasing away anyone who’s looking for trouble. Early in the game, you’ll be given a task of building a special, VIP, booth. Since it will take a whole day for the booth to build, instead spending Comix in order to speed up the construction, save those Comix so you can hire a perfect VIP (perfect for your way of playing), taking a huge bonus and making your convention even cooler! Just note that VIPs are there for a limited time so it’s better to hire low cost VIP (such is the one giving you five times more cash from food stands) a couple of times, then an expensive one once.
11. Build Themed Booths As Soon As You Reach Level 15
Themed booths (horror, Sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) will give you more money and experience, and will bring new visitors that’ll spend more money and will have some interesting special missions for you. When you get close to level 15, start saving money for themed booths, and construct a couple as soon as you reach level 15. Since they give you more money, it is wise to move decorations close to them, so they can earn even more money and experience!
We tried to gather as many tips as we could, in order of making you the best Con Man, without spending a cent on the game. We hope that we succeeded in providing you with enough useful tips and advice and that you’ll have no problem of creating the best fan convention on the face of the Earth. We wish you a good game, and as always, happy gaming!