Playfish Launches Hotel City

RatedRShadow · 26-03-2010, 02:10 AM

Facebook game company, Playfish finally flipped the switch on its long-rumored Hotel City social game this week. The naming similarity to Playfish's hit restaurant title Restaurant City is not a coincidence – Facebook gamers who have played that title should feel right at home managing their new Hotel City hotel. But never fear – Hotel City is newbie-friendly, too.

What is it?
In Hotel City players design and run their own virtual hotel. Players can decorate each room as they see fit, hire their friends to manage the front desk or run the maid service, and expand with more and more rooms as guests bring in income.

Why It Matters
The verdict is still out on Hotel City, but developer Playfish has a solid track record with Facebook business simulations. Restaurant City is one of the biggest games on Facebook, with more than 15 million players. Hotel City contains a lot of design similarities, and it will be an interesting test to see if Playfish can catch lightning in a bottle with another "City" game.

How to Play
Players begin their career as a Hotel owner with a brief tutorial. After learning to navigate the menus and about other basic game functions, players are thrust into the exciting world of hotel management, to find their way on their own.

The three major tools Hotel City players have at their disposal are Redecorate, Build, and Staff. Correctly managing all three will allow players to earn coins (the game's currency) and Hotel Points (the game's experience points) at a faster pace. Coins can be spent on more rooms, or improving the rooms a player already has. Earning Hotel Points allows players to level up. At higher levels more decorations and special rooms are unlocked.

Let's start with Redecorate. Decorating your Hotel City hotel rooms is more that just a form of self-expression. The more chairs, tables, lights, artwork, and other decorations fill a room, the higher the room's rating becomes. A higher-rated room makes a hotel more popular, bringing in coins and Hotel Points at a faster rate.
The decorating options are already extensive, and it is very likely that more props will be added over time. A dark dungeon, a seaside surfing pad, and a modern Ikea-esque apartment can all be created using the decorations already in the game.

The Build tool is how players change the layout of their hotel rooms, or add new ones. Moving rooms is easy – just drag and drop, using the mouse. In this way you can have a ground-floor room or a top-floor penthouse. Buying new rooms is done the same way, by dragging the room you want over from the build menu's store. Besides Hotel rooms, players can buy gyms, restaurants, swimming pools, and other key hotel experiences.

Finally, the staff option allows players to hire their Facebook friends to work inside their hotel. Hotel City provides the first three staff members for you, but after that, if players want to expand further, they'll need to convince a friend to come work for them.

Facebook Forecast: Will Anyone Play?
The verdict is still out on Hotel City. We are enjoying our time with it, so far, but Playfish's last Facebook game, Gangster City, failed to find a significant audience. Only time will tell if Hotel City will turn out more like that mafia snoozer, or their restaurant hit.

Source: http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1078590p1.html
Game Link: http://www.facebook.com/apps/applica...d=299672925361