Hotel Galactic Preview

Are you a fan of Studio Ghibli? Did you love the look of the spirit world in the Avatar: The Last Airbender series? Have you ever wanted to run a hotel? If you have, then Ancient Forge’s latest title, Hotel Galactic, could be the title for you. I had a chance to try out the game to see if it was a magical adventure worth keeping an eye on, or if you should consider booking a different hotel.

Now, I want to preface this preview (heh) by telling you that I have mixed feelings when it comes to management games. The issue that I have is that micromanaging is often beyond me, especially when you don’t have the means to make your staff do what they need to do easily. For instance, Two Point Hospital allows you to assign someone to a room, and they work in that room. That’s ideal for me. Although, I do know that other people prefer getting more hands-on with all the details. 

With that in mind, let’s have a look at what I experienced when I tried to help open a hotel for a ghost. I realise that might sound a bit odd, but that’s the plot, and you can see where Ghibli comes into play. You are a spirit who finds a broken-down hotel run by Grandpa Gustav, plus his group of oddball assistants request that you help run the hotel. However, while many of the people you’ll meet are pretty friendly, others want to see you ruined. 

Honestly, the plot does get pretty interesting, and I’m curious to see where it goes. The issue is that the progression is usually locked behind performing certain tasks, so it does take some time to get going. Unfortunately, there’s no voice acting in the game outside of the odd squeak or gasp as characters talk, so some of the deeper moments do get lost behind walls of text. 

The main focus here is on building new rooms, bringing in guests, and essentially everything that goes into running a hotel. However,  I found the whole experience to be a bit of a mixed bag. First things first, plotting out how to construct the building is really easy thanks to the seamless menus. I knew what went where, while never feeling confused as to why I couldn’t build something. 

The problem is that when you want to do anything, your staff has to do it in real time. It’s hard to explain, so let’s look at a situation. Say I want to build a new room for a guest: firstly, I need to plan out the room, then the staff will need to gather each material (in this case, let’s say four bits of wood) individually. Once they’ve done that, you’ll need to have one staff member build the bed, which then will need to be carried from the workbench to the bed and placed. 

Now, this would all be kind of fine, but the problem is that your staff in Hotel Galactic are slow when it comes to carrying anything, and this kind of process happens for EVERYTHING you want to do. For instance, you want to make food for a customer? Welp, you’ll need to take an order, walk it down to the kitchen, gather all the ingredients (individually again), cook it, prepare the plate, and then carry it. It’s just so long, and it’s not helped by your staff AI being really weird. 

The problem is that, rather than setting a staff member in a room, you instead set their priorities. So, for example, making one prioritise cooking and carrying while not focusing on cleaning, building or researching, etc. In theory, this is fine, but the problem is that they often seem to completely ignore their priorities or get confused if there is more than one of them in a room. Let’s take my cooking example: I have one guy who I set to prioritise meal prep. Annoyingly, the game doesn’t let you specify grabbing ingredients, so rather than grab the ingredients I needed, he wandered off to bring in firewood. 

Now, you can force them to do certain tasks by grabbing them and dragging them near to what you need done, but that’s a lot of micromanaging, which can be stressful when you have a lot of guests. With that said, once you have a few more staff members, it becomes less of a problem, as you usually have enough people to do each job. However, the early game just takes a long time to get going, which is an issue with the overall experience, as it takes a long time to unlock stuff.

If Hotel Galactic has one strength, it’s the visuals of the landscape, alongside the character design. The world you inhabit is weird and wonderful; all of the characters look fantastic, from the trumpet-nosed pigs to the dragons that fly in the background. Add to this the music, which helps to build a magical atmosphere

If you’re into games that make you micromanage, or you simply love this kind of art style, then I think Hotel Galactic will be one for you to keep your eyes on. With that said, if you find micromanaging to be a bit of a pain, then you might want to look elsewhere.