The Nacon Life series was announced in 2021, with five games to start that label off. First came Train Life in the last quarter of 2022, then Chef Life in the first quarter of 2023. But it seemed the other three were dead, with no recognition for them even as new Life games were announced. Until this one, Hotel: A Resort Simulator, appeared out of nowhere in the last quarter of 2023.

Note the lack of Life in its name. I’m pretty sure Nacon would prefer this hadn’t released. As despite the fact it has released, there’s been no recognition from them on social media about it. In fact, there’s been so little information regarding it that many websites still have its release date as 2021. So just how bad is the game that its publisher has seemingly successfully swept under the rug?

For me, this was the one I was looking forward to most. There’s not many games with a focus on managing your own holiday resort, after all. And to start, I was enjoying it. Sure, it froze a few times, but I could overlook that when I was having fun. Most of the career mode acts as a tutorial, so here I was enjoying my time at the resort learning what it would take to run it.

For starters, there’s the radial wheel that allows you to swap between various tools. Pool needs cleaning, swap to the cleaning tools. Fridges need stocking, swap to the refill tool. The top right features the To-Do list, which updates itself whenever something needs doing. This also includes checking guests in and out at reception, and managing the various facilities such as the restaurant.

As the resort gets bigger, you can’t be expected to handle all of these things on your own, so hiring others is necessary. There isn’t much in the way of management for the workers. Each has a task you hire them for, with them heading for where those tasks take place. Whether that be a specific facility or hanging near reception until needed. For those such as cleaning or repairing, you’re quicker than the hired help, so it’s likely you’ll have it sorted before they arrive. Especially with the ability to teleport to facilities.

For customisation, there’s specific buildings that you can place on this map in specific areas. All the paths, terrain and foliage cannot be edited, leaving the untouched grass patches for placement. And even then, the game is very picky about how you can place them. For instance, trying to get a guest room as close to a corner as possible was a futile task. But a swimming pool whose steps go right through a line of foliage is a-okay.

When it comes to what’s within those facilities and guest rooms, it’s pretty much up to the player what they want to do. There’s a set amount of items needed to make that area operational, and then further items needed to increase the prestige of it, but it’s easy to go mad with power and make the most weird facilities ever. Though there are limitations, such as only allowing plumbing items inside the designated bathroom areas of guest rooms.

Then there’s personalisation, which is easy enough to do. Whip out the paint tool, point the reticule to an item, and if it has things that can be customised, the popup will appear. There’s a limited amount of colours to work with, along with wallpaper designs, but enough to create a colourful facility. At least until it crashes. Where loading up again you’ll find all that personalisation wiped – even if it was part of the item when you placed it.

And that is just the tip of everything wrong with Hotel: A Resort Simulator. It really is bad. Very bad. I can’t help but feel betrayed by it because it seemed to be the type of game I could really enjoy. And that betrayal started with career scenario nine. I could forgive the freezes, as I was enjoying it. Even if three in the space of two hours feels overkill. But, this scenario was the first to give full freedom over where facilities were placed.

As such, I was experimenting somewhat. The large space in the middle of the resort where the swimming pool usually goes I’d instead placed a small restaurant with the intention of adding other facilities when I could. But that small restaurant seems broken, especially when there’s so much needed to make it operational. Including a bar that takes up a lot of space.

So much so, I was getting a message at the start of every saying there wasn’t enough space for guests to eat. Two tables with four seats each, and that’s not enough for two guests. Playing around with how I’d placed things brought not results, with me also finding out that the game seemingly locks the first objects placed to get a facility operational as important. No selling them, even if other objects serve the same purpose.

And then it froze not soon after. And then the scenario wouldn’t load. Even after multiple attempts. Wiping the data for it, I was back at the start, and working quickly to get back to the mission I was on. Upgraded all facilities to the next prestige level, and now it was just a case of waiting for the review from the first guests when they checked out to finally complete that mission.  That review was enough to meet requirements. But no other guests were checking in, which was something I’d encountered with the other save, too.

No-one would check in on the second day, leaving an entire day of waiting. The game has no skip time options of any kind, except for when everyone has gone to sleep. But with no guests, there’s no-one here to go to sleep. So, having waited an entire day to get the new mission to clean up after the storm hits, I then find that mission incompletable. Having cleaned everything, nothing triggered. It refused to move on, even after making sure the To-Do list was completely empty of any jobs, and reloading to try forcing it to accept the mission as done. With that, I gave up on the game.

Hotel: A Resort Simulator is absolutely not something you should be giving your time to. Too frustrating a game in dealing with all of its freezes and annoying foibles that I could not recommend it to anyone. Which is absolutely a shame, as there is potential in a game like this. But God is it so wasted here. And considering Nacon want to show off greatness with their Life Game label, I can see why they refuse to acknowledge this at all.

Images Taken From:
Hotel: A Resort Simulator | Xbox Series S