The game commences with you selecting your character - pretty simple just make your choice and away you go.
The first levels you are pretty much guided through the game, so we don't need to help you much with those levels.
I will just say you can scroll the screen from left to right, not everything is contained in the screen you are actually viewing - there are more gameplay areas often if you scroll left or right with a swipe.
Click the actions as requested in the game, and make the choices that you want to. You can start over the game I guess and try different responses, but as yet we are on our first go and have decided to be as nice a person as we could be!
Don't forget to tap all the cash and objects that appear after you have completed a task to bank them.
There is plenty to do in the beginning, sometimes it is things that require you to make a decision based on how you want the story to play out, and others are just default actions that you have to perform.
Interestingly there are usually multiple stories happening at the same time, so even if you have to wait for one action to complete, you can be off doing other things at the same time. Check the purple ticks at the top left of your screen to view your current tasks and goals.