Hotel Galactic Review

The Management simulation genre is vastly popular within the mobile gaming ecosystem. However, many studios are yet to explore this genre, except for a few who came up with brilliant titles like Sultan's Game or Punch Club 2: Fast Forward, etc. Ancient Forge, an indie studio that also tried to experiment with this genre, released The Tenants, which somewhat pleased the fans, and came up with Hotel Galactic, a newly released hotel management simulator on Steam.

Hotel Galactic introduces hand-drawn visuals similar to their work in titles like Blockbuster Inc., Glorious Companions, and The Tenants. Its anime-like design, to be more specific, Ghibli-esque art, is eye-catching to say the least.

While still being in the Early Access stage and at a $12 price tag, this game is intriguing at first glance, but do the appealing visuals make up for the lack of compelling gameplay? The answer to that question is what we are on the hunt for.

You arrive as a wandering spirit, suddenly placed in charge of a long-forgotten hotel once thriving with guests and magic. Guided by spectral caretakers, your task is to breathe new life into it, rebuilding it room by room while uncovering small lore threads through optional dialogue and environmental details.

The world the game is set in is fantastical, where guests arrive via skyships, encapsulating the majestic nature of the immersive world created. The plot is simple and lighthearted, but doesn't develop into anything memorable or emotionally engaging. The worldbuilding is bland, especially in contrast to the visual aesthetics.

The characters and lore are simply forgettable because they weren't well executed. Also, in the opening cutscene, the spoken and written dialogue don't always match. Throughout the game, there are noticeable dialogue errors and other rough edges, such as subpar punctuation, that need to be patched. 

"It's pretty much a traditional hotel manager game", is where you'll be wrong if your mind goes there. Although it seems like it on the surface, you'll get the chance to supervise conversations amongst your staff, adding a personal touch whilst streamlining narrative progression, even if there's not much of a narrative to emphasize.

Conversations with your staff will determine your fate within the universe, which could range from the theme of your hotel to the color palette. You manage your hotel through intuitive side-scrolling construction, staff micromanagement, and creative decoration.

The game lets you manually design layouts and decorate freely, which provides for a visually enjoyable experience as you watch the rooms of your hotel get built. The game rewards creativity, which is a major plus point for artistically inclined people. 

You can add a music box to the lobby with custom tunes, research new rooms, and add gameplay systems—the possibilities seem endless. The amount of content the game is delivering while still being an Early Access title is pretty impressive, it must be said, given the scale at which the studio operates. 

Additionally, the game's packed with fun, stimulating activities that will keep you on the edge of your seat. You'll hire workers, assign tasks, build rooms, craft furniture, cook, price, and deliver meals. Cooking, for instance, becomes a hands-on, semi-intuitive crafting mini-game.

You physically drag ingredients—chilies, pasta, fruits—onto boards and cauldrons to create recipes. It's tactile and satisfying when it works. But the mechanism can be tricky and lacks polish, often requiring trial and error. 

Here comes the catch. What begins as mild frustration slowly snowballs into a realization: Hotel Galactic is riddled with problems that go far deeper than a simple patch or update can fix. Even small things—like a microstutter when your mouse passes over interactables—create a sense of disturbance.

It's not particularly a performance issue, but it mimics one, especially when all the glitches accumulate, making the management aspect of the game feel sluggish and unrefined. Then you hit the more obvious breaks—like being prompted to prepare meals for servants without having the storage or ability to do so.

At one point, you're stuck simply waiting for hunger to kick in, unable to progress, making the gameplay cumbersome and exhausting, which is a shame given the artistic prowess the game displays as aforementioned. 

Objectives remain blocked, the UI offers no guidance, and you sit idle. And just when that starts to grate, a larger failure hits. The in-game clock, the very heartbeat of the day-night rhythm, collapses entirely. Guests arrive at night and leave at dawn, except now, time stands still.

You're frozen in an eternal night, unable to check guests in or out, disrupting the game's core loop. If you restart the game, the clock doesn't fix itself; rather, you get guests dropped off at your already jam-packed hotel. 

Another issue is the game's pacing. Progression is slow. Perhaps as the hotel expands and staff increases, it'll feel faster—but even at 2x speed (the fastest option), the pacing feels dragged. Task completion often feels sluggish, especially since actions are done in stages, tying up staff for extended periods. It's not a dealbreaker, but it's noticeable.

Hotel Galactic's main banker remains its art. With hand-drawn visuals, the game provides an aesthetically soothing, yet juvenile, setting that is captivating. The game, although feeling unpolished mechanically, has visuals that keep your eyes glued to your screen.

The game seems to have taken quite some inspiration from the renowned Studio Ghibli when it comes to characterization and the world the game is set in, evoking nostalgia. Sound design is another aspect working in the game's favor. The music is pleasant, albeit forgettable, but it gets the job done.

The sound effects are whimsical and adorable, matching the style of your little worker bees going about their tasks. As for the voice acting—well, it's silly and absurd, but deliberately done. It fits the mood of the game despite catching you off guard in the beginning. 

Regardless, the gameplay at the moment provides for a lackluster experience, which unfortunately is not overshadowed by the stunning graphics. Overall, the core design is imaginative, the soundtrack lovely, and the atmosphere enchanting, but hardly any of that matters when such game-breaking hindrances ruin what could have been an indie classic.

Hotel Galactic is truly galactic to the eyes, but once you get your hands on it, you are thrown right back down to earth. It's hard not to be disappointed, given the promise it displayed, but it fell short at the finish line.

The game deserves praise for its vision, but it also deserves criticism for launching in such a brittle state. Despite showcasing immense attention to detail in terms of visuals, the gameplay evidently took a massive hit in trying to achieve said visuals.

The game may still be redeemed, but we care about your best interests at heart. The game, although riddled with bugs, is a treat to the eye, and for that reason only, we still can have hope. At the moment, though, Hotel Galactic is hardly worth the price it's been launched at.