Review: Hotel Renovator – 3 Star Hotel Manager Simulator

Hotel Renovator belongs to the kind of games that offer gamers to test themselves in a variety of professions, allowing them to get a superficial, but rather extensive idea of a particular type of activity, and even, perhaps, decide to devote themselves to it in real life. The hero of our review makes it possible to get into the shoes of a hotel manager: we tell how accurately the game conveys the costs of this profession.

• Developer: Two Horizons
• Publisher: Focus Entertainment
• Release date: March 7, 2023

The protagonist inherits the hotel from his deceased grandfather – how original, right? This is as much a hackneyed move in the simulators of something as the “chosenness” of the protagonist in the RPG.

The hotel looks abandoned: the walls and floors have apparently not been repaired for decades, fragments of furniture and rubbish are strewn everywhere. However, in the city, everything seems to be so bad with hotels that a queue of potential guests has already lined up in front of the door of your establishment. We’ll have to roll up our sleeves and start putting the first of many numbers in order.

Working on each of the rooms involves performing repetitive actions: first, demolish everything old and remove debris, then equip the room using various wall and floor coverings, furniture and decorations. The repair process is very slow and methodical, which cannot be called a drawback of the game – it comes in perfectly after a hard day at work: you can turn on some podcast or video in the background and fall into the renovation process for two or three hours. Very relaxing and helps to clear the mind of all unnecessary.

At the same time, the developers have tried to make the gameplay as comfortable as possible. Even the most basic tool, the pry bar, makes it possible to destroy large areas during demolition work, and a little later, options such as a sledgehammer and dynamite are unlocked, which allow you to clear an entire room in one fell swoop.

The same approach is used in the arrangement of rooms. You can click on each “square” of the surface in turn, or decorate the entire wall in the room with one click. However, there were some inconveniences here: the interface for choosing the type of flooring and walls, as well as furniture, is not the most intuitive, and scrolling the menu with the mouse wheel makes you scroll through the lists for a long time to get to the desired option.

Already at the start of the campaign, Hotel Renovator offers a wide range of ceramic tiles, masonry, parquet flooring, wallpapers, sofas, lamps, armchairs, cabinets and other items to decorate rooms. The more experience the player gets, the more content he opens, so there is a lot of room for imagination.

The game is not limited to simple tasks to restore hotel rooms, but brings them under certain plot events. For example, a real vampire wants to settle in your hotel, and he will ask you to hang the room with curtains, add more black and red. When the newlyweds and their guests move into the hotel, you will prepare separate rooms for the bridesmaids and groomsmen, restore the banquet hall and oversee the gala dinner.

If you take into account the wishes of the guests, as well as clean the rooms in a timely manner and respond to complaints, such as a request to calm down too noisy guests, you can count on generous tips to invest in furnishing rooms, purchasing better tools, as well as some hotel improvements, such as updating the reception desk which will eventually lead to even more money.

In addition, the game periodically throws up funny situations for the player. For example, one harmful chicken often enters the room, with which many interesting scenes are associated. You can even play dice with it! The chicken, by the way, is not easy: it lays golden eggs, which bring additional profit – of course, if you can find them in hotel rooms.

I would like to praise Hotel Renovator for its pleasant gameplay and good humor, but there is something to scold the game for. First of all, for performance: the title is very demanding on PC resources, while its graphics cannot be called amazing, the character models are sloppy, and their animation is clumsy and clumsy.

There is also imperfect work with object collisions, the protagonist passes through objects, textures periodically start to flicker or disappear altogether – in general, there are enough bugs in the game, although you most likely will not have to deal with bugs that break the passage.

However, such shortcomings are quite typical for such simulators, and Hotel Renovator is not the worst title in this regard. If you do not focus too much on bugs, you will get a good hotel manager simulator that can give a lot of positive emotions.

PROS

• Meditative, measured gameplay
• Addictive career mode and creative sandbox mode
• Large selection of elements for restoration and decoration of rooms
• Good humor

CONS

• High requirements for PC resources
• Sloppy character models
• Lots of bugs