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Jane's Hotel isn't the sort of game you'll likely rave about, but it's a solid enough experience if you like the genre. You take control of the titular Jane, whose dream it is to have the best hotel ever, like her grandmother had. You also get to control the chambermaid (er... housekeeping staff) which adds a facet to the gameplay most other time-management sims haven't included.
Title: Jane's Hotel
Publisher: Breakquest
Developer: Breakquest
Date: December 2010/January 2011
Format: PS Minis (PSP/PS3)
Rating: ESRB E (Everyone), PEGI 3+
Genre:casual/time management sim
Gameplay is Serious Business
Jane's Hotel, like most time management games, is about running a business. So it's also sort of a sim, but don't expect to be balancing your budget or anything (fortunately!). You do have to make money, of course, and you do it by keeping customers happy so they leave you better tips. You start with a modest size hotel with only a few available rooms, and customers arrive slowly at first. Navigate to the reception desk to get them keys, then fetch coffee, call the chambermaid and direct her to clean rooms, and hopefully your guests will depart happy and leave big tips.
Each level has a goal for the amount of money you need to make. If you fall below that goal, you have to relay the level before you can move ahead. Reach or exceed the goal and your hotel's popularity goes up, which means you progress to the next level, where you have more guests who are more demanding and make you juggle tasks more quickly. Between levels you can use the money you made to buy things for your hotel, like plants, fancy lights, and things you'll need if you hope to keep up with your guests and make them want to come back.
Business is Frustrating
When I first started up the game, I met instant frustration because I'd select the keys, and nothing else I did seemed to make it possible to actually give the keys to the guests. The game's help wasn't any help--it was simply too vague about how to do this. After multiple failures and restarts, I figured out how to get the guest selected. Possibly I was just being dumb (I was playing at the end of a generally bad day, so I wasn't in the best mental state), but it's also an indication that the help manual should have been just a touch more specific.
Once I'd surmounted my own stupidity and the unhelpful help, things went a lot better, at least until the game became overwhelming. Because the main way Jane's Hotel gets more challenging is by throwing more and more guests at you who want more things so you find yourself desperately trying to keep up. And it just goes on getting harder by adding more guests.
Much to Beatshapers' credit, the controls (once I figured out how to select a guest properly to give them keys) don't get in the way too much. It could have been a nightmare to play the game with only the analog stick or d-pad to navigate--on a PC you have a mouse which makes rapid selection of items easy (which may be a very big reason this type of game is most popular on PC). You do have to do a lot of selecting that way, but you've also got the right shoulder button to call your chambermaid and single or multiple presses of the shape buttons to get you to reception, the coffee pot, and other key locations.
Frustration is Kind Of the Point
Though getting frustrated is not my favourite activity of choice, with this kind of game it's sort of the point. You avoid that frustration as long as you can by your skilful juggling of tasks and guests. In other words, the whole aim of this type of game is to see how long you can keep it up. With Jane's Hotel, it's hopefully long enough to build the grand hotel of Jane's dreams. If that sounds torturous, then not only is this not the game for you, but you should avoid the whole genre. If it sounds like a challenge, then give this one a try (or perhaps supermarkets are more your style). The graphics are decent, the music and sound effects are not irritating (some days that seems like a huge achievement), and once you figure out how to hand the guests their keys, the gameplay is pretty good. Plus it's a PS Minis, so it's cheap and a quick download.
Publisher's Site
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