If you share your life with a dog, cat, or any other furry companion, you likely understand the desire to provide them with the best possible care. They don’t have to worry about work, finding food, or paying for healthcare. In fact, my dog’s grooming routine is more extravagant than my own, complete with a stylish pink bow as a parting gift.
In Pets Hotel, you get to design and manage a haven for pampered pets, catering to their every need. Are you ready to become a servant to the animal kingdom?
Pets Hotel falls squarely into the simulation genre. There’s no epic narrative or dramatic storyline and instead, the focus is on efficiently managing a pet hotel. You inherit the establishment from a family member and from there on out are tasked with ensuring its success. While you’ll interact with pet owners, the primary focus is on caring for the animals themselves, fostering relationships with your furry clientele.
The game offers two main gameplay components. The first involves designing and building your hotel, adding rooms and customising the décor to suit the preferences of your animal guests. This aspect is straightforward and easy to grasp.
The core gameplay though revolves around the daily routine of pet care. There’s a campaign mode, a challenge mode, and a free mode where you can manage your pet hotel indefinitely. Owners arrive and check in their pets, requiring you to manually enter their information into a register. While some might find this detail realistic and engaging, I found it tedious after a while.
From there, as you would expect, each animal has specific needs, indicated by helpful pop-up notifications. These needs include fresh water, food, exercise, and occasional baths, particularly for the canine guests.
As your hotel fills up and the number of animals increases, you’ll find yourself rushing to meet their various needs. While the gameplay loop is initially engaging, feeling pretty unique, the long-term enjoyment depends on your affinity for simulation games. If you like nothing more than working through these type of games, you’ll be fine here. But if not…
It’s good then that as you earn money, you can hire staff to assist with the workload, streamlining the management of your pet hotel.
Visually, Pets Hotel is functional but appears somewhat dated, reminiscent of something that has burst out of the Xbox 360 era. There are occasional lighting glitches, but the user interface is clean and well-organised, which is crucial for a simulation game.
The soundtrack is just about good enough to draw you in to, featuring a pleasant piano melody that provides a relaxing backdrop for your pet care duties.
Several factors contribute to the overall enjoyment of Pets Hotel. Firstly, an affinity for animals and a desire to care for them is essential. With that in mind, Pets Hotel should well appeal to younger players who enjoy nurturing virtual pets. Secondly, an appreciation for simulation games and their often repetitive gameplay loops is crucial.
The problem is, even then, the visuals and gameplay loop in Pets Hotel are somewhat lacking. You may enjoy the meticulous management of complex systems, and if you do, should find Pets Hotel to be a rewarding experience. But otherwise it’s a hard sell…
Pets Hotel Checks in on Xbox Series X|S: Build Your Dream Pet Paradise – https://www.thexboxhub.com/pets-hotel-checks-in-on-xbox-series-xs-build-your-dream-pet-paradise/
Buy Pets Hotel on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/pets-hotel/9mxb6bg38n9d
