Hotel Galactic – Studio Ghibli-inspired management game

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• DEVELOPER: Ancient Forge
• PUBLISHER: Ancient Forge
• PLATFORMS: PC
• GENRE: Management / Cozy
• RELEASE DATE: July 24, 2025
• STARTING PRICE: 33,99€
• REVIEWED VERSION: PC

Hotel Galactic is a charming and unique management simulation game where you turn a rundown intergalactic hotel into a thriving cosmic destination. Developed by Ancient Forge, it blends wholesome nostalgia, a Studio Ghibli-inspired art style, and a heartfelt story for a cozy experience. Currently in Early Access, the game shows a lot of promise but is also very rough around the edges.

Lots of content despite being in Early Access

Here, you don’t play as a physical character within the world in a traditional sense; instead, you float above it, acting as a guiding spirit. Your primary tasks involve building, decorating, managing resources, and catering to a diverse array of intergalactic guests. Hotel Galactic also promises a deep experience with a huge technology tree and many unique guests. However, you’ll likely never reach a satisfying ending.

Besides the story mode, you can also play a sandbox mode. I recommend starting with the story mode, as it acts like a tutorial and lets you explore at a slower pace. The sandbox mode, on the other hand, offers more freedom. The core gameplay loop is all about meeting guest needs and expanding your hotel. Guests arrive with specific requests for rooms, food, and amenities, but you only fully get to realise this in the mid part of the game.

“Progression is very slow since it depends on your guests.”

You then assign your adorable animal and alien staff to various tasks, like chopping wood, mining materials, crafting furniture, and cooking meals. While you set the priorities, your workers handle most of the execution, which creates a satisfying sense of running a self-sufficient colony. Building new hotel rooms is a straightforward process: you choose a room type, select a location, and your workers build it. Decorating is also a big part of the game, with a wide range of themed items and furniture you can unlock to fully customize guest rooms and common areas.

While the management aspect is decent, the staff’s movements are very inefficient. They’ll often ignore nearby tasks to travel to the other side of the map. The game is also incredibly slow. It takes a huge amount of time to just transport things from outside inside the hotel. Although the double speed helps, the in-game days and nights are so long that they disrupt the flow of the game. On top of that, progression is also very slow since it depends on your guests for new technology.

Great ideas that were left unexplained

The idea behind the technology system is good: various type of guests give you “goo” that you can spend on new tech. This lets you unlock more advanced crafting recipes and automation. As you progress, you gain “Spirit Chimes” and advanced worker skills that eventually automate tasks like cleaning rooms and watering plants. I really wish the game introduced this automation earlier. The later parts of the game are quite fun, but the early micromanagement is frustrating. Why can’t the staff automatically collect sheets or take guest orders in the dining room? I don’t want to spend my time clicking on everything.

Cooking system is a bit simplistic as only one ingredient currently affects custom dishes. You can choose to cut or boil ingredients and experiement with recepies. Sadly, it’s currently unclear what each ingredient does to the final dish. Also, the game doesn’t really properly explain the cooking system and its importance, you’re kinda left out to figure things out yourself. Your food supply depends on merchants, which can be a problem since you only have one type of food available on your planet. If a merchant doesn’t show up for a while, you could run out of food.

“The gameplay concepts are well-designed, but the bugs are what really ruin the experience.”

In general, the gameplay concepts are well-designed, but the bugs are what really ruin the experience. The camera movements are clunky, staff members fall through the ground, and guests wait for hours just for a single dish to be made and served. There were also occasional FPS drops, but I didn’t encounter any game-breaking bugs.

What this game really needs is better balance. Three starting staff members is just too few. While you do get new ones quickly, there’s so much to do early on that it’s exhausting and makes it hard to properly expand your hotel. There are also a lot of systems that are left unexplained. For example, the game never clarifies if guest comfort matters, if they need specific foods, or if decoration has any real impact.

Given its unpolished state, the price does feel a bit too high

One of Hotel Galactic’s greatest strengths is its amazing audio-visual presentation. The game features hand-painted scenery and great sound design, creating a fantastical atmosphere. Its 2.5D storybook aesthetic, which is reminiscent of Studio Ghibli films, uses warm, muted colors and soft textures that look like watercolors. With floating buildings, glowing animals, and magical furniture, the game creates a unique and charming visual identity.

I won’t lie, the price feels a bit high for an Early Access title that still needs balancing and polish. However, considering the amazing visuals, the amount of content already available, and the interesting ideas it introduces, the price seems fair. That said, there are more polished and complete games out there that might be a better choice right now. I would recommend waiting to see how the game develops before buying it.

Review copy provided by the publisher