Holiday Motel Simulator Preview

With the prevalence of simulator titles, gamers have been given the chance to try out a plethora of occupations and lifestyles, ranging from chefs and firefighters to career thieves and power washers. As such, it can be difficult to stand out from the pack unless you’re bringing something new to the table… or just do it all, like in Red Phoenix Interactive’s Holiday Motel Simulator, which we were lucky enough to preview!

There is no plot to speak of, which is pretty much the standard in the genre. We rock up to a dilapidated motel on a (actually pretty nice) beachfront property and are tasked with cleaning it up, flipping the sign to “Open”, and starting our lives as entrepreneurs.

The feature that drew me to the game was the variety of the simulated tasks on offer. We clean up the filthy lobby, renovate the available rooms, and even operate a small in-house market, all accompanied by simulated tasks.

Your day-to-day activities can be boiled down to five major categories: cleaning, renovating, renting, serving guests, and shop management. Each task has its own quirks and varying controls, though they’re never overtly complex.

Cleaning is by far the simplest of the bunch, as it’s a case of using the right tool for each job; a mop handles stains, a vacuum busts dust, a sponge clears up graffiti, and so on. In addition to the larger-scale deep-cleans of long-abandoned motel rooms and our office, we will also be in charge of keeping the beach clear of trash and picking up after each guest.

Once a room is spick and span, or it feels like the time for a new look, you can get down to renovating. By utilising a special app on our phone, paintings, tiles, and materials can be ordered, with which any space can be reinvented. Additionally, the same service also provides furnishings and necessities to make your guests feel at home… or make a dedicated disco room for the connoisseur of horrible decor.

When not hip deep in soapy water or floor tiles, the lovely beach nearby will often draw in a bit of a crowd looking for sun, fun, and some delightful snacks to fill their evening. Seeing the possibility of profit to be made, a convenient beachside restaurant and bar is ripe for the running.

Both establishments are run with a similar set of mechanics: you use a separate app to order goods, which are delivered the next day (even though paints and the like are instant, go figure), then stock up and wait for the orders to come in. There is no cooking or drink mixing minigame to speak of; you push a button, gain a product, and run it over to your customer.

I did like that the restaurant was mainly run during the day, whereas happy hour started after sundown, making the hassle somewhat more manageable.

The penultimate category, shop management, will feel very familiar if you’ve played other similar simulator titles: goods are ordered, stocked on shelves, and the till is operated. Interestingly, it is also the only task that uses one of the tools from the other categories. Instead of having a dedicated barcode reader, you utilise the handheld scanner (normally used to get rid of excess materials) to sell items to customers.

Ironically, for a game named Holiday Motel Manager, the renting of rooms is a relatively small presence. In the beginning, none of your rooms are ready to rent, so you’ll have to clear each one out and renovate it before opening your doors to prospective clients. However, once that is done, you can freely accept guests in your office, discussing their needs and assigning rooms, if available. Once their visit is up, they’ll drop the keys off, and you'll clean up in preparation for the next.

Hearing all of the different mechanics on offer, one may assume the game acts like a best-of compilation of multiple games. However, it is very much a case of quantity over quality, as the different features feel cut down and clunky versions of the originals. Sure, there is a lot to do, but it isn’t very stimulating as a whole, and the somewhat dull tasks are exasperated by a generally unwieldy UI, requiring far too many clicks to perform basic actions.

As a final note, the game does use AI-generated images in the version we were given access to, which is stated on the Steam page.

However, it should be noted that the game is releasing on Steam Early Access and is very much a work in progress at the time of writing, so there is every chance that my gripes will be fixed before the full release. As a concept, Holiday Motel Simulator has potential and could work to bring together the great mechanics developed in other games under one title. I look forward to seeing how it develops in the months to come.

Holiday Motel Simulator is set to be released on Steam Early Access on the 18th of September.