Hotel Dash: Suite Success

It's more Flo and more of the finely-tuned time management action we've come to love in Hotel Dash: Suite Success! Flo's friend Quinn is expanding her wedding business by offering honeymoon packages, but the hotel she's booked is a bit of a lemon. Enter Flo and her uncanny ability to turn any business from failure to success in the course of one casual game!

Running a hotel can be, in the world of video games, boiled down to a simple chain of events. First, patrons will enter and wait for you at the desk. Drag and drop them onto a room to get them settled in, then bring up their luggage. Guests usually want something to eat shortly after that, sending you off to the kitchen to fetch some food. Some customers will have other needs, such as fresh towels for trips to the pool or wake-up calls, but otherwise all you need to do is gather payment, take out the dirty laundry and you're good to go!

Guests come in a number of different varieties, including large parties which must be matched to bigger rooms. They also have unique personalities which have to be taken into consideration. Some customers have lower patience levels than others, forcing you to tend to their needs first, while others make frequent visits to the pool or bring along several suitcases you'll have to carry to their room. Guests also wear colored clothing that can be matched to room colors for an extra bonus. Who said the service industry was easy?

Upgrades play a more important role in Hotel Dash than most other time management games. You can beef-up the usual suspects in the hotel lobby, such as buying better carpet or improving the scenery to keep customers happy. Now, though, you can add stars to individual rooms which will earn you a star buck each time someone stays there. This special cash is used to upgrade the honeymoon suite, which, if you'll recall, is the reason you're playing this game in the first place!

Analysis: It's hard to overlook the enormous success of the Dash series and the impact it's had on casual gaming. Where would the time management genre be without Flo and her various outings? Somehow each game finds that sweet spot between retreading old material and introducing something unique. Hotel Dash: Suite Success is no different, tweaking that time management formula just enough to draw you in for level after level of fun.

Colorful customers are another staple of the series, and Hotel Dash doesn't skimp on the character. They may not have the outlandish charm of the people in Ice Cream Dee Lites, but you'll grow to loathe the fashionista, the ghost, and the business people for their own unique quirks all the same.

The chief drawback to Hotel Dash: Suite Success game, other than its lack of originality, is the low-level of difficulty. You can charge through the story mode in a long afternoon, scoring "expert" on nearly every level without breaking a sweat. Endless mode, available from the main menu, offers a challenge if you're craving one, but otherwise its calm waters from level one all the way to the end.

It may be short-ish experience, but Hotel Dash: Suite Success for Mac and Windows scratches that time management itch you have with style. It looks great, it plays smooth, and it dials up the complexity ever so gradually, compelling you to keep playing even when you have to, you know, work or go to school or something.

Review by JohnB

Casual Gameplay