Hotel Renovator is the latest management game pubblished by French pubblisher Focus Entertainment, known for recent successes such as “Atomic Heart”, and developed by Two Horizons. Through a Stardew Valley-esque premise, the game introduces the player to a down-trodden hotel inherited by the protagonist’s grandafather. After selecting one of four assistants, watch the opening cutscene and reach the coveted 5 stars!
Easily comparable to 2018 hit House Flipper, by Empyrean, Hotel Renovator seems to be a natural successor; as the protagonist, you’ll have to; clear old trash, break wall and floor tilings, repaint all the surfaces, and refurnish with various items and decor that fits whatever preferences the VIPs coming in request.
Appealing graphics and realistic lighting
The game’s appereances are nothing other than a treat for your eyes. The Unreal engine really carries the graphics, with the HUD and aesthetics definitely fitting for a game in 2023. Any user can appreciate the lighting, such as the reflections seen on tables and walls and the beautiful shading done as a consequence. The background music and SFX are nonetheless, with soft rings and embellishments that make clicking any interface a treat, while the soothing smooth jazz helps your mind wander and unleash its creativity in the rooms you create. Sadly, the heavy unoptimization of the game is very apparent, with assets loading very slowly and giving your computer’s CPU a run for its money. Reflections, although also very realistic, are again held back by something we will be able to see throughout this review as a reoccurring in the game, its lack of polish. A lot of mirrors placed will lack reflection and instead show an empty white placeholder view.
The hotel is not the only decrepit part of the game
Sadly, the graphics are the only quality that are notable in this incomplete mess of an Unreal project. Although the ideas are most definetely there, with an appreciation for room customization, variable guest preferences that add challenge, different tools to optimize your room renovating, and a balanced management/artistic gameplay division; there is a complete absence of any polish or additional work that make a prototype into a commercial game.
Returning to the game’s only saving grace, aesthetics, the negative aspects can be seen slowly seeping in and outweighing the positive ones exponentially; yes, the Unreal engine puts forward industry-standard graphics and the music department certainly is a treat to one’s ears, but once: sound effects are erroneously coded in as they reset every single time an object is destroyed or placed, animations feel slow and clunky, – needing to wait for the phantom brush covering the ceiling and walls minutes after you started their construction – items and furniture only being able to be rotated in the cardinal directions causing for awkward orentation, finally not to talk about the total break of immersion when NPC sprites start repeating and the same character is shown as multiple different entities with very off-putting pathfinding. The complete lifelessness of the aforementioned NPCs only gets worse when considering how the player’s model has practically no collision except for walls, floors and doors; it truly feels like you’re a ghost happening to be renovating a hotel.
Regardless of an obvious focus on simulator and management games – as seen from Two Horizon’s very idealistic plans of a variety of “renovator” games such as Camping and Aquapark Renovator – Two Horizons brings close to nothing in the game itself. While theoretically Hotel Renovator seems like a more-refined and natural successor to “House Flipper”, it is very apparent that the development on the game was either made to follow the likes of No Man’s Sky and Fallout 76, with the game seemingly set to heavily rely on future updates or community-lead projects (further reinforced by the significant emphasis on mod compatibility), or to be a fast cash-grab with a probable exploitation of Unreal free assets, and while I am not knowledgeable enough to find what assets were used, the choice of very niche and specific elements in the customization rouse suspicion on how selective Two Horizon was when selecting them.
