Hotel Tycoon Resort

Hotel Tycoon Resort – Sandcastles turn to luxurious resorts

If you fancy being the next Donald Trump or running your own Hilton-esque empire then you could do much worse than learning the basics from an entertaining game. True, it’s not quite like the real deal but you’ll be glued to the screen nonetheless watching the money roll in as you watch your business expand from one hotel to a flurry of apartments, diners, sports and entertainment facilities.

For those of you familiar with the ‘Tycoon’ games, all you’d expect to find is included in this gem of a game. Those of you who’ve not ever played these management style games, you are given the ownership of a resort which you must then guide through its development to turn it into a success whilst overcoming some hurdles in their various guises.

There are two modes, story and endless – but you can only access the latter once you’ve successfully completed and unlocked every stage in the story mode. The story revolves around a vague plot where you must try to impress your girlfriend’s father (who’s a resort tycoon) who gives you tasks of increasing difficulty to overcome after showing you the basics. As you’d imagine, you have a variety of attractions to choose from ranging from fast food joints to volleyball courts and everything in-between. To do this, you are given an intuitive menu to work from broken into four key components; terrain & hotel, eat & drink, fun & entertainment and sports & wellness. By pressing the OK key, you will open up this menu and through cycling to the left or right, you get to pick the category of choice, and by moving the controls up or down you go through the list of available facilities.

I often wonder why I never got to play with this sort of game while at school learning about economics and business – it is more entertaining and memorable than any of the tasks set by the teacher or exercises in the text books! Granted, this is geared to entertain more than educate but this does give you quite a few concepts which are used in the business world today.

Anyone who enjoys the therapeutic angle of placing buildings into an island setting and watching your hard work get appreciated by the visitors to your resort then you’ll find hours of entertainment in this game. If you’re more interested in a quick game that is over with in just a moment or two, then I’d suggest you’d better keep looking elsewhere – as perfection does take a while to achieve and your patience may be tested to its limit.

If I were to pick any faults of this title I’d say there’s no option of changing the difficulty setting and once you complete the basic objectives in a level it’s just a question of waiting until you’ve earned the set amount of money – which can be several minutes.

To keep your interest from dwindling too much, you have the fun of cleaning up after your resort visitors and picking up any money which is dropped around the complex. Another task which you will find yourself doing is repairing and maintaining your resort. To be honest though, once your resort reaches a certain size it’s usually wise to employ a cleaner and mechanic (or two) to tend to all this maintenance stuff (although you will have to still pick up the money).

Ultimately this game offers a very addictive and entertaining distraction which will keep you playing for hours on end. Needless to say the endless mode lives up to its name! The graphics are detailed, the content’s well displayed and controls are very good. The depth to this game is also highly commended for the ability of cycling through the resort’s facilities and the guests’ thoughts. The repetitive nature’s easily blown away by the fun challenges. In short, this is great fun and certainly worth adding to your games collection.

Rating 85%

Positives

Great controls

Good graphics

A depth of gameplay seldom found in many mobile games

Certainly more of a thinking and real-time strategy style game for those who want more of a game

Negatives

Repetitive – especially repairing and cleaning up the resort

Long periods of time spent observing rather than playing

No way to alter the difficulty setting