Hotel Architect Review

What a great tycoon game! It has cutesy artwork and many small goals to achieve for new rewards. I had such a blast playing through this game and unlocking all the achievements! There are no missable achievements; unlocking the 14 achievements available during the early access launch takes around 10 hours.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: Around 10 hours for the current achievements (14 during the Early Access launch)
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: You don’t need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Hotel Architect blows me away while it just launched into early access, and more goodness is to come! You’re building and running a hotel, with more locations opening up the further you get. Each hotel already has some of the basics, which is great to get new ideas for design for future or previous hotels. Each location has 4 main goals and multiple bonus goals, and each goal unlocks an item that is then available in every hotel. Not every bonus objective is doable from the start, as for some, you need unlocks from later levels (for example, getting to 4 and 5 stars isn’t available from the beginning). If you care about how long completion takes… then focus on the 4 main goals and move on, and later come back for the 5 stars goal, if you don’t mind.. go ahead and build and plan everything you can, but I still recommend to move to the next hotel quite soon as you wouldn’t want to get those new unlocks and build them in previous hotels. I really love that Hotel Architect gives you all those goals to go for, as it gives a direction, something to work toward. That is precisely how my brain works and why I love achievement hunting in games.

This game really sucked me in, and I couldn’t stop playing. If I could have physically gone on, I would have completed the current 4 locations in one sitting :P. I normally only do what is required for the achievements, but in Hotel Architect, I even went for a lot of the bonus objectives just because I was having so much fun.

I really enjoy the cutesy art style and the bright colors. One of the silly things is that the people in this game have no legs or feet, and you wouldn’t even notice until they lie on a sun bed, which can freak you out a little. Hotel Architects gives you a lot of different styles and colors to choose from for wallpaper, the floors, but also for many of the objects within the hotel, you can choose a color. So you can really design the hotel in a way you want. The more expensive stuff is more attractive to customers and will make them pay more money per night, so that is an incentive, but you could totally ignore that if you don’t go for 5 stars.

The mechanics in Hotel Architect make a lot of sense. For example, your staff earns experience by doing tasks, which makes them better at it. the staff members have different traits, so keep that in mind when hiring them and focus on those, as for their level of experience.. that will come over time. Another thing is that you unlock skill points during the game to improve several things in your hotel, like how the kitchen works (add a dishwasher for example), but also how quickly your staff gets tired and need a break, or improvise the quality of the objects in your hotel like the beds or the bathroom facilities. You get those points after a critic reviews your hotel, so you have a better idea of what you should improve to get a better review the next time a critic comes by, and they visit your hotel every 2 days.

As I already said, I really love the addictive game loop with the goals a location provides, and opening another hotel in an area with a different setting and building it up again. Hotel Architect is still in early access, so there are only 4 locations for now, but more locations are planned. I’m very impressed with the state of the game while it is in early access. I think I noticed a minor bug with some of the bonus objectives not unlocking (or I’m understanding them wrong), but that is just a minor thing, and I’m sure if it is broken, it will be fixed soon. For the rest, I only have wishes for a few of the menus. I would love to be able to search within the available objects you can place in your hotel, and maybe even have an option to hide unavailable ones, and a specific quality level. You have now different categories, but sometimes a category is just so huge, or I don’t know which category it is in, and it gets a bit bloated the more quality upgrades you unlock. However, it is amazing how many objects are available in this game; you can live out the dream of designing a hotel. Another thing I would love is if the menus show a little more info; for example, you can see a percentage of where the money comes from and where the funds go in the financial overview. Still, I would love to see the numbers, not only the percentage. Another menu thing I would love to see is icons in the menu overview of your staff, which person is allowed to do which tasks. For example, a cleaner can do four different tasks, but if they are a mop specialist, you might want to put him/her solely on mopping the floors. To be clear, I would love to see these minor improvements, but the game as it is right now is already amazing! It already has so many nice Quality of Life features, like seeing your hotel through a filter to spot where hot/cold temperature zones are, or where there are inferior quality items. Or being able to copy the color of the wall/floor so you can easily use that again in another room.

The achievements in Hotel Architect are straightforward. Nothing is missable, and the 14 there are right now (20 May 2025, Early Access launch) can be done in around 10 hours, but you could spend so much more time if you want to. I’m delighted the bonus objectives in each location are really a bonus and not required for any of the achievements, as this allows you to ignore them if there are objectives you don’t like. I expect that there will be more achievements added later on, as there are achievements for each location to complete the four main goals, as well as getting to 5 stars. As earlier described, that later part isn’t possible at first; you need the rewards of the first location to get to 5 stars in a hotel. There are also achievements for things that can happen to your quests and staff, as well as an achievement for designing the guests/staff through the option in the main menu. This one already unlocks when changing something; you don’t have to save the change if you don’t want to.

I give Hotel Architect 5 out of 5 stars. I’m really looking forward to seeing new locations that will be added later!

This review for Hotel Architect was written on , based on the current Steam version of the game which has achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, May 2025for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.