Hello, fellow Magnates! Just over one year ago, we entered Early Access and what a journey it has been - we couldn’t have done it without your help! We have listened, gathered feedback, and implemented a whole lot of changes to make Hotel Magnate the best it can be! To mark this special milestone, we have added some highly requested systems like bankruptcy/loans, more creative mode options, furniture grouping & sharing as well as a much improved Guest Review and mood system.
Guest Requests, Expectations, Experiences & Reviews
We have done a near-total rehaul of how guests experience your hotel, including how you interact with them and how they review your hotel. The old system was a little clunky and ambiguous about how some of the scores were generated or where in your hotel they were having bad experiences.
Guests will now sometimes create “Requests” when they encounter something they don’t like. You will be alerted of this request by some icons in-game as well as in the warning/alert menu. Generally, the guest will want you to fix the problem within a certain timeframe. If you solve the issue, the request goes away. If you fail to solve the issue, the guest will have a bad “Experience.” This essentially gives you a chance to fix an issue before it negatively affects your guests or reviews.
Guest Request as displayed on the guest
Guest Requests as shown in the new warnings UI
Guest “Expectations” are essentially a small list of things a guest will want to achieve or do during their stay at your hotel. It is best to try and satisfy all of these Expectations for your guests as they heavily affect how the guest review is calculated.
Guest Detail UI showing the Experiences and Expectations
As mentioned before, failed requests will create a negative experience for guests. Other negative and positive experiences will also be generated throughout the guest’s stay at your hotel. They could be things like:
“I had a great meal.”
“My bed wasn't high enough quality.”
Or even, “I couldn’t find a toilet and had to go on the floor.”
Both Guest Expectations and Experiences are then used to calculate a guest review. You can now easily see a breakdown of the various reviews in the reviews menu; understand what went well and what didn’t, allowing you to make better decisions on how your hotel is run.
New reviews screen
Currently, reviews affect the amount of guests that come to your hotel. In our next update, we will be expanding upon the guest spawning and marketing systems which will see some changes in how guest reviews affect your hotel’s performance.
Guest Moods
One of the most exciting features in this update is the improvement of Guest Moods. While our last iteration of guest moods was working and did affect guest behavior, we have drastically improved upon it. Guests that are sad or angry will now have different animations while walking/standing.
New sad guest walking animation
We have also introduced a new state for guests where - if they are angry - they might end up walking around your hotel damaging or dirtying furniture. They will sometimes walk around shouting at or complaining to other guests, causing them to become unhappy as well.
A very angry guest destroying items and causing mayhem
If you mismanage your hotel, things can easily spiral out of control as guests destroy or damage your hotel, leading to more disgruntled guests and further property damage. We hope this feature will bring an extra level of management (and chaos) to the game.
Creative Mode
From the abundance of feedback we received about our creative mode, we have made a few adjustments and improvements. Firstly, creative mode will now be unlocked for players when they reach their first 3 star hotel instead of a 5 star hotel. The reason we have (and had) this limit is to make sure players experience the normal game mode and learn the base mechanics before moving on to the more unlimited creative mode. Unlocking creative mode at 3 stars rather than 5 still ensures the player experiences a normal game mode.
Secondly, we have enabled the ability to toggle different features on/off when starting a creative mode game. This includes features such as Utilities, Money, the Catalog, Hotel Star Rating, Maintenance, and Objectives. Now, you will have a more tailored playthrough of the game and create the kind of scenarios you want.
Bankruptcy & Loans
Gone are the days when you could spend endlessly with very little consequence! You will now have to watch how much you spend, and on what, as we are finally introducing bankruptcy and bank loans! You will no longer be able to purchase any new objects or build any rooms once you have reached $0 or below. At that point, you will either have to take out a bank loan, sell some furniture, or both!
You will not be charged interest on your bank loans, but you will be charged a % fee on the remaining amount you owe. Make sure you spend your borrowed money wisely to best increase your income and dig your way out of your financial hole!
Furniture Grouping & Sharing
For all those building and decorating fanatics, we have finally introduced the long-awaited and requested tool of being able to group, save & share furniture. This is the beginning of our implementation of allowing user-generated content and modding. Being able to create, save and share your custom creations will hopefully assist and inspire people to create even more beautiful hotels!
Grouping some furniture and saving it as a template
You can then load your templates back into your hotel (or other hotels)
While you will have to manually share these saved groups with each other for now, we will be adding steam workshop integration in the near future. The folder where these are stored is adjacent to your savegames folder.
Don't forget to check out our Public Roadmap on Trello if you want to know what's coming up!
Changelog
Changes:
- Allow placing doors & windows on curved walls
- Added basic Spanish translation
- Adjusted the catalog system to reward fewer points
- Unlock creative mode after three stars
- Moved the bug report button to the top right
- Don't unpause game when closing "miss magnate"('story' popups) if the game was paused before
- Added "shift + ins" to toggle all UI (basic camera mode)
Fixes:
- Fixed Flood fill floor issue
- Improved loading of rooms
- Fixed removing a facility from a room breaking detail views
- Fixed issue with fired staff not always stopping when the game is paused
- Fix issues after removing furniture that guests are using
- Added spa to facilities list in management menu
- Fixed floor painting issues
- Fixed the "sell this object" popup on warnings UI
- Fixed the locate room button not always working
- Better nighttime light calculation
- Better handling of walking on the spot
- Fixed bar not running out of supplies
- Won't allow duplicating if you don't have money
- Fixed issues with some water elements having black tints
- Fixed some animation speeds
- Removing a wall with doors/windows now correctly removes the selected part
- Fixed "select door button" objective being given when it shouldnt.