It’s a pretty well-known fact that I (Mashashy) was raised in the service industry. While I mostly stick to wrangling unruly TYG goblins these days, I still like to enjoy reliving my hospitality days through the medium of business simulation games. So when a game titled “Dream Hotel Master” came across my dashboard, I was quick to request it for myself.
“Manage and operate your dream hotels, expand your business, enhance hotel services, and attract more guests to create a unique five-star hotel!”
You’ll be forgiven after reading the above, Dear Reader, for thinking, like me, that there is a management game to be had here, but that sadly is not the case. Dream Hotel Master is, from what I experienced, a game with multiple levels, wherein you have to manage a wave of customers arriving at your hotel. So, it’s not what I expected, but is it any good?
At first, you only have two primary tasks – reception and concierge. The receptionist books guests in and accepts their money as they check out, while the concierge cleans rooms. The concierge’s tasks then increase with food and drinks being added to the room service menu.
You control these by tapping on the associated tasks or customer speech bubbles which indicate what they want. It’s a simple gameplay loop, but engaging as the fast pace, combined with the stacking limit of the concierge’s tasks, requires your undivided attention. There’s also a time limit to consider.
Completing tasks within the time limit gains you a higher number of “likes”, which are usually the goal of each level. Failing the tasks results in a small penalty but the level requirements weren’t especially difficult. Some of the levels also had additional requirements such as “don’t lose any customers” making them more challenging.
If you fail the level, you lose a heart. You have five of these, which essentially means you get five tries before you have to set the game aside and wait for your hearts to refill, much like a mobile game.
Unfortunately, Dream Hotel Master’s likeness to app games is just the start of my issues with this game, the first being the poor localisation – or lack thereof. I can forgive the occasional bad grammar and mixing of sentence structures, but there are entire words which haven’t been translated. The worst offender of this is the screen upon completing each level.
I am left to assume that there is some kind of reward granted for completing levels, or at the very least a button for me to initiate the transition to a new screen, but it appeared to be missing. This also led me to realise there were several other features such as the power-ups which were missing graphics so I didn’t know which one I was activating.
There also appeared to be a texture missing on the main hotel screen as customers clipped behind layers as they were going to the cash register. However, this issue is proudly displayed in the video footage on the game’s official Steam page. I’m not one to come down on an indie developer for minor slip-ups and applaud anyone willing to put themselves and their work out for public consumption, but this degree of poor attention to detail is pretty shocking.
The strangest and perhaps most frustrating error I occurred essentially wiped my save every time I closed the game. It did not, however, wipe my level progression number. What followed was a series of attempts to complete/quit the tutorial to the home screen where, despite the level number continuing to increase, I was forced back into the tutorial again.
Honestly, I’m a little bit gutted by this final error as the rest of the issues weren’t especially game-breaking and the gameplay loop was actually rather fun. I managed to get about 20 levels into the game before the save wipes started and my progression became pointless. By this point, I had unlocked a few new machines and mechanics, but I never got to experience the supposed creation of a unique 5-star hotel.
Dream Hotel Master’s artwork is pretty cute but generic, and the music wasn’t terrible, so there’s potential for a great disassociation game here, but not as it stands.
Developer: lc86
Publisher: 66games
Platform: PC
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