Hotel Galactic

Hotel Galactic

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Regarding the Community Event of reviewing the game
Since I cant find a thread for that I open one. ...

My review for the game:
Basically a game made with passion. Lovely athmosphere, nice characters, good sound design and a beautiful graphic set. I like the idea, setting in general and the basic gameplay.

But the localization (German) is quite bad. Not only grammer errors, but wrong words, meaning something completely different than the context would suggest. Either bad loca studio or bad briefing / loca management. Maybe having the proof reader playing the game could improve the overal quality of the translations or add a context column to to loca file (but this maybe is overhead).

The first issue I have with the "New Game" interaction. The simple Plus graphic doesnt look like a button. It should look more button-like, especially when later there are "transparent" buttons. So it is possible to combine the lightness design with functionality.
I really dont get the fanatism nowadys with using long press buttons. This isnt playfully or joyfully, it only adds waste time, without any meaningfull action or reward. It doesnt make sense especially when in similar situations the player only has to just hit the button, instead of long pressing. Two situations when it acually would make sense are packing an object or moving it. But in this situations this mechanic isnt applied. It happens quite often, that I just clicked on an object out of curiosity and after a while I see it is gone, laying down on the floor as a package. I really dont know how, why it happens that easily.
There are some situation where I dont get the game design decision.
Closing the wheel menu should be working on ESC too. (in my personal gusto, using wheel menus for PC games is a bad decision in general, but anyway - it is as it is)
Sometimes rooms are "behind" a wall, so that a hallway is infront of them, like for guest rooms. Then you have a "walk-through", w/o any hallway. Since in some cases it surely makes sense in others it doesnt. For instand, why a toilett room is a "walk-through" room? Especially when you have to decide if this room is for all people, guest only or staff only. The only reason I could imagine is space. You may need more space to place furniture or stuff. But then, why not just expanding the third axis?
For instance are the toiletts on theground floor right side. So EVERYBODY walks though them when they go to garden or stones or whatever. Feel extremely weird.
There is the sub mission of limiting access to toiletts only for staff. When I did it, guests still walked into the room. Then I relaized that the sign shouldnt be at the entry, as in the real world, it should be in the room, to prevent certain groups form using that room. This is illogical, doenst make any sense, bc it is "access control" not "stay controll". ;-)
Sometimes you can click on alert bubbles, like cleaning bedsheets, but you cannot click on the ready meal to be delivered or using laundry pot to clean sheets. This should be the same mechanic, in this case, being able to click on the alert bubble, bc, cometimes food plates are so small, pointing on them is challanging in some zoom levels.
Putting unfamilar to each other guests in one room is totally weird. This wouldnt happen in any normal hotel.
Next is when you have to talk to an NPC, you have to wait all time, until this character stops moving, before being able to start the conversation. Although the speach bubble is already atop of the char, you cannot click it. It feels broken. Why not just let the char stop walking and start the conversation after clicking the bubble?
Conversation is the next thing. At first I thought they are broken, bc I couldnt click further, although it shows "clicking LMB" and I did. Then I realized I have to click into the conversation window. It felt broken in the first place. I wouldnt limit the "click area" to the conversation window, just listen for the click.
Queues, in this case I referring to the workbench queue. The feedback is not noticable enough if the player has filled up the queue and cannot add anymore to build. An easy way would be everytime the player clicks to build another item, but the queue is already full, all items in the queue get a red highlight/ outline glow. And an added item count/max queue, well visible.
I can check in a random guest from the guest queue (waiting line), but I cannot check out the guests in the order I want to. This led to situations where I had several guests waiting for checkout, but I had to wait until the first one arrives, then I coiuld check out each guest one after another.
It is not always clear what current job/action a NPC is performing. I have to check the working order window to clarify. The bubble above the head could be extended with a mouse over context, showing the exact job, the very char is performing: hover over the bubble and let the info appear and let it be visible until the player moves the mouse again.
IMHO it would be a better game experience, when the play is able to more zoom in and out during placing an object ort building.
I think the working orders doesnt work correctly. I set caretaking on highest prio, but still the go to the workingbench and deliver materials. Why?
Navigation with MMB instead of WASD doesnt work properly.
Mouse overs for "x" closing windows dont have consistent haptics. Some do have mouse over feedback some dont. It should be always a mouse over feedback in place.

So basically it is a nice game, but I cannot recommend it due to its poor loca in German and some of the mentioned issues. For now. Maybe if the loca would be improved I could recommend it.. (send me the Google sheet link to the Loca IDs, and I could it ;-) , because it is in some cases so bad, that it hurts / is not understandable) If you aim for a younger audience, it should be a correct loca.
The worst issues are the feedback ones, interactions (with NPCs and wheel menu exit) and interface/ mechanic inconsistency. I dont have the possibility to change to english (greyed out) either, maybe the experiece would be better then.