There’s something so gratifying about simulation games. They offer a sense of creativity and control we sometimes lack in our everyday life. With its well combined mix of strategy and creativity, Hotel Architect, by Pathos Interactive, employs those feelings by allowing players to build, design, and manage their own hotel.
Whether you want a cute and quiet beach resort, or a bustling luxury destination, Hotel Architect gives players the freedom to build, design and manage their own hotel empire. Will your hotels reach five stars, or burn out?
your hotel empire.
Game modes
There are two main gameplay options in Hotel Architect. Build your hotel from scratch in sandbox mode or challenge yourself and revitalize existing hotels in scenario mode. In both options carefully plan layouts and facilities to accommodate your guests. But make sure you avoid disturbing guest actions, this can lead to unhappy guests, and in return they’ll leave bad reviews.
In scenario mode, you are presented with a prebuilt hotel that just needs a little work. The game presents challenges for you to accomplish. Every destination comes with different challenges. Some are simple, like having a certain number of guests visit the gym. Other more complicated challenges require spending money and time designing or upgrading facilities for your guests to use. Completing the challenges unlocks both sandbox mode for your current location, and advances you to the next world.
After unlocking sandbox mode, you are given choices for your start conditions. Choices include the amount of money you start with and if you want to enable/disable cheats. This is all preference, and how much of a challenge you want. Sandbox mode doesn’t include a list of challenges for you to accomplish, instead your challenge comes from starting from the bottom. It’s up to you to get your hotel up and running. Build, design, and manage without guidance.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Hotel Architect for both scenario and sandbox are similar. In each mode your goal is to build and design a hotel that is appealing and functional, bring in money to fund your upgrades, and appease both guests and the critic.
Every two days, a critic will come and evaluate your hotel. From the rooms, to staff, entertainment and more everything is under the judging eye of the critic. At the end of their stay an individual facility and hotel overall score will be tallied. Now every visit won’t be a home run (I can tell you that from experience) but with a high enough score your rating can go up.
We know Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your hotel can’t go from a one to five star in a day either. Each critic visit can only bring you up one star rating maximum , and that’s only if you do well. The individual score will help you determine where you soared, and where you fell flat. I really recommend paying attention to this part of the scorecard. You can learn from your mistakes and fix them before the critic’s next arrival.
Upgrades
Each time your hotel is evaluated, you are given upgrade points to distribute how you see fit. The higher your hotel gets rated, the more upgrade points you acquire. Upgrades include furniture and appliance quality, space efficient storage, additional slots for your bar and restaurant menu, overall staff count, higher loans, overall facility upgrades and more. Not only do upgrades make your guests happy, they also help out your staff.
Do take note that upgrades do not carry over to the next hotel, nor does money. Spend your upgrade points for the purpose of the current hotel you’re playing, not in hopes of making your next hotel “easier”. Sadly, it doesn’t work like that. Each location is its own challenge and grind.
Staff & Guests
In Hotel Architect, your staff are the backbone of your hotel. Without them, this place wouldn’t function. Make sure you have an easily accessible and well designed staff room for your employees. A happy and rested employee is a productive employee.
Each staff member has a hire cost, as well as a daily salary. The higher the level your staff member is, the more expensive they’re going to be. On top of all that, each member also comes with their own attributes. Some are wonderful, like the leadership trait which rallies other employees within a certain radius. Others are middle ground, energetic BUT they need more breaks. And then there’s some that are downright awful. Like the stinky trait for instance, where that employee won’t shower before work. Not only does it affect other staff, but guests too.
Making sure you have enough staff to run your hotel is also a learning process. Too many and you’re paying for them to stand around, not enough and things that affect guest experience suffer.
There are six different guest types within Hotel Architect. The Backpacker, Sporty, Business, Sunbather, Brat and Upper Crust. Each type has their own preferences from facility offerings, room size, room value and more. Trying to please them all takes a lot of finagling, and finding a happy medium.
Building
Building in Hotel Architect is quite simple and easy to pick up. In your initial scenario you’re given a walkthrough of how to build and design. You have the ability to add and delete outside/inside walls at the drag of your mouse. Drag and drop things like windows and doors, even stairs to your fancy. Choose wallpaper and flooring to match your hotel’s aesthetic. Finally zone your room to one of the many facilities Hotel Architect has to offer, and finalize your design with beautiful furniture to your liking. The higher ranking the hotel, more zones become unlocked. Add a spa or sauna for your Brats, maybe even a conference room for your Business guests.
woken up to the sounds of smashed walls.
All building is done in-game real time. Sometimes building an entire floor took 3 in game days. Hire the right size crew for your job. At three price points your budget can jump just by hiring too many builders.
My one piece of advice, don’t wake sleeping guests by smashing down walls. Disrupting guests’ sleep can lead to bad reviews. But, I will say I found my guest’s reaction to a window being put in her room at 3am quite amusing.
Cash Flow
In Hotel Architect, the one thing to remember is cash rules everything and everything has financial consequences. Overspending can send your finances in the gutter, but lack of upgrades leaves guests with unmet expectations. As you play you’ll find a balance between looking good, making guests happy, and just keeping a roof above your head.
If you’re strapped for cash, there’s always the choice of taking out a loan. In the financial tab, offers for loans pop up daily. Find one that works for you. Make sure you are able to make your payments!
Final Thoughts
Despite being a challenging managing sim, rather than punishment, Hotel Architect teaches that failure is an enjoyable part of the learning process. Finding ways to adapt, and creatively figure out problems is all a part of the cozy chaos this game has to offer.
Hotel Architect is a meaty game despite being released under an “early access” label. For someone who loves to build, design and manage, there’s so much replay-ability here with even more gameplay being teased in game and on the roadmap. Pathos Interactive has also said they’re taking community feedback into big consideration when continuing with content. For me, that speaks volumes. Devs that truly want a community to help shape the direction of a game and make it something they want to play.
For a game that is a beautiful blend of creativity and challenge, check out Hotel Architect.
Hotel Architect releases May 20th for PC on Steam and you can receive 20% for the first two weeks.
Thank you to the devs at Pathos Interactive for the key.
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