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6.8 sorta fun
Flo's friend Quinn is back and getting the can-do waitress into more sticky situations. Quinn's wedding planning venture has become a success, leading her into a profitable side business of organizing honeymoons and other vacation getaways for Dinertown residents. The only problem is that every place she tends to send clients... turns out to be a total dump! Now she needs Flo's help to rebuild five classic hotels, each in only ten days. Because in ten days her clients arrive and she can't afford for them to be disappointed.
Flo's too busy to even take off her apron, but she agrees to help her red-headed friend. In Hotel Dash: Suite Success, from Playfirst, Flo acts as bellboy and maid in five different hotels, each with ten fast-paced levels. This hotel time management game plays very much like a typical Diner Dash game.
Guests arrive in the lobby, where Quinn checks them in. Your job is to drag them into a room. Large groups of guests require larger rooms, while groups of one or two people can be placed in smaller rooms. Each group is a different primary color, and each room is also a primary color (based on the last group to occupy it). If you can match guests to a room that corresponds to their color, you'll get a small score bonus. As you progress through the level, restoring the hotel, new rooms and hotel features become available.
Guests immediately need their luggage taken to their room. When they check out, they leave a garbage bag of dirty laundry at the door to be washed. (And presumably sent to their home? I'm not sure how this works. The check-out process is a bit odd in Dinertown. Guests pay at their room door instead of going back down to Quinn at the front desk.) Flo must cart guests' luggage up to their room, settle their bill when they're ready to check out, and take care of all their needs in between: room service, towels for the pool, mopping up the water guests constantly spill into the hallway, feeding their noisy dogs, taking their snapshots, waking them when they sleepwalk, and more.
As in all time management games, everything is accomplished by clicking. You can chain together as many commands as you want. Click on the luggage in the hallway, the room it needs to go to, a bag of laundry in the door of another room, etc., and Flo will move to each place in turn. However if you goof up and tell her to go to the wrong place (for example, sending a suitcase to the wrong room), you'll have to restart the chain. The more like actions you accomplish in a single chain, the more bonus points you receive.
There's no day and night cycle; guests arrive and leave at their whim.
Groups of guests arrive with five hearts floating above their heads. These hearts represent their satisfaction with their hotel stay. Keep them waiting for too long and their hearts will decrease... if they decrease completely, the guest will become angry and leave! The happier the guest, the bigger the tip. Some guests are more impatient than others. Luckily Flo can bring ice to any room to improve the guests' spirits. What do they do with the ice? Beats me, but they jump for joy when it arrives.
Each hotel has a special suite that Flo and Quinn must decorate before ten days are up and Quinn's charges arrive. These suites are upgraded by spending Star Bills to purchase extravagances to make the suite look nicer. For example, a floor lamp costs 25 Star Bills. Yes, I know that's expensive! When I was a kid a floor lamp would have to speak seven different languages if someone expected my parents to pay more than, say, twenty Star Bills for it! You earn Star Bills by upgrading the regular rooms in the hotel: every room you purchase a star upgrade for earns Star Bills when guests stay in it.
Hotel Dash: Suite Success also offers a regular score, based on how many guests you put up, your color-matching bonuses, whether anyone left in anger, bonuses for fast service, and tips based on the customer's experience. This score acts as your cash fund from which you purchase cosmetic upgrades for the hotel. You can make the elevators faster, get a cart for Flo so she can carry more things at once, put flowers and artwork in the hallways, buy better mops and ice machines, etc.
I'm afraid I wasn't too impressed with the graphics... it's been years but we're still serving the same smirking teen girl customers as in previous games. That didn't bother me too much, because there are many different customer types included, from ghosts to celebrities to loud-mouthed cell phone talkers to sports fanatics. However the jerky/stuttering way Flo and guests climb in and out of the hotel elevators did annoy me. There's nothing smooth about it, and as everyone is constantly riding the elevators, it's something Playfirst shouldn't have cut corners on.
Finally, I had a problem where the game crashed on me in the second hotel. "Error: Access violation 0x005806D3 (tried to read from 0x10B3DEC4), program terminated." It only happened once, however. The copy I reviewed was the Big Fish Games version. Big Fish Games claims that Hotel Dash: Suite Success is exclusive to their site, however it is also available directly from the developer at $19.95. So Big Fish Games has made a mistake or is getting creative with the truth in their marketing... Frowney face!
Download Hotel Dash: Suite Success