Hotel Galactic

This game has such a beautiful cozy world you want to sink HOURS into! The management has a fun premise and the game is full of whimsy and wonder. The story mode seems pretty enticing. Unfortunately, at it's current state I cannot recommend the game. This game launched riddled with bugs. Game freezing, crashing bugs. I played for about an hour before encountering my first bug that literally killed my entire game (story mode.) I thought, "okay no biggie. I'll send my report and play the sandbox mode while I wait for story mode to get fixed." Yeah, no. I made it about 15 minutes into sandbox mode when all my employees decided to strike and freeze. Yet another game ending bug. I decided at this time it was not worth it to attempt another save file and waste more time. Another thing is the quests are pretty confusing and there's not a lot of clear direction. Especially when it comes to the research tree. It is such a shame to down vote this game because I know I WILL LOVE IT! But at this time until it has its first update when all of the bugs are squashed, I don't want anyone else paying close to $40 for a game that you can only play an hour for before it dies. :( Note: I am veryyy aware this is an early access game however, to charge $35 for an early access game and it can only last about an hour before crashing and burning seems pretty unacceptable. I will not be returning the game because I really have my fingers crossed that they will work swiftly to fix bugs and allow it to become playable and I want to really love the game.

It's no huge revelation that this game had a, to put it mildly, rough start. The devs themselves admitted they never should have released it so early. That being said, I held off on doing a review and gave them a month or so to see the fixes and changes they would implement. I didn't need to add to the already massive sea of bad reviews that will probably scar this game for it's entire existence. So how is the game now? (End of Sept 2025) Just fine actually. I joined the games discord channel and watched in real time as they helped people with their issues live, rolled out a plethora of updates, bug fixes, and suggestions and most importantly genuinely rewarded and thanked the people who did stick it through with them. So I restarted a new save, and I can happily say I ran into almost no bugs or issues, and the small 1-2 bugs I did run into fixed themselves when I logged out and back in. The game isn't just playable, its actually as fun as we had hoped from release. I have about 43 hours in right now, and I plan to put many more in as time goes on. Hotel Galactic is for anyone who is enchanted by similar art styles of Miyazaki's 'Spirited Away'. It's for those who enjoy the 2d management genre, it's for people who want a nice cozy game that allows for real customization. As you go through the story line the game asks you to make choices, and depending on the personality type of your choices (maybe your a more passive person or a loner for instance) the hotels aesthetic will change along with what you've decided. The very first example being the game asking you a question that changes the color and theme of the hotel lobby (you can go back if you don't like your decision ofc). Which I thought was very unique and interesting. At this point in time I do recommend giving the game an hour of your time to decide if you like it or not. I do understand how mixed reviews can easily allow people to overlook a game, but this is one of those rare instances where the games reviews at release do not reflect the condition the game is in now. I do hope that Hotel Galactic can come back from it's horrible start, but even if it doesn't, it's a cautionary tale to all developers to make sure your game is ready, playable, and up to par in quality when being released.

First, I want to give kudos to the dev team for not giving up on this game when it launched to mixed reception. They admitted that they screwed up releasing too early, resulting in a buggy mess, and went on to release a rework that addressed all the complaints. The devs' transparency and accountability is why I decided to finally pick this up. Verdict: zero regrets. It is a very cute and cozy hotel management game with Ghibli-like graphics. There is a pleasantly large amount of lore related to the world and characters, which speaks to the devs' passion for this project.