Encontrei por acaso esse jogo a quase um ano atrás no game pass, a capa me interessou então instalei, e fiquei os próximos 3 dias viciada nele, nas primeira horas o game e super divertido, porem ele vai se tornado maçante, repetitivo e nada recompensador. Por conta disso dropei e fui lembrar que o mesmo existia esse ano, e depois de quase 10 horas de gameplay finalmente zerei. Apesar da gameplay desnecessariamente longa achei o game interessante, captura bem a essência noventista, tem uma boa trilha sonora e jogabilidade. (Grande parte das horas que gastei foram tentando bater recordes nos fliperamas kkkkkkkkkkkk)

Interesting game but takes a while to get past the more mundane tasks you need to do to get to the actually interesting gameplay loop at its core. I really can't blame people not seeing past that given how important that stuff is to the first few hours. It takes a while even to realize not only can you start to ignore that but you really should.

The idea behind this game is that you are a young adult woman running a laundromat owned by your asshole dad. Your character isn't interested in that but there are a few arcade machines in the back that are more fun/interesting which you focus on instead. The initial mundane tasks previously mentioned relate to doing laundry. At the start the few arcade machine only make so much money, you need more to buy more machines and really ramp up the arcade part of your business. As a result your main source of income has to be doing the laundry which requires you be on top of it to really make anything or else you are paid less for taking too long. This leaves you small gaps to actually play the arcade machines which can make for a frustrating experience as alerts for laundry interrupt you.

In the laundry's defense, it makes sense for the narrative being told and is gamified to reflect it as well. In a weird way once you are past the need to do the laundry you almost miss like some messed up Stockholm syndrome situation.

The arcade games gain popularity the more you play them and even more by completing certain goals for each machine. This leads to them generating more money per hour. You can also adjust difficulty and cost of each machine as their popularity increases to maximize the money they make. There's also benefits to placing less popular cabinets next to popular cabinets so they get a popularity bonus from that placement. The sooner you understand these mechanics the sooner you can ditch the laundry and have the machines rake in the cash, only taking breaks from playing more to manage things like broken machines that occasionally need attention.

The arcade games vary in quality. They're knockoffs of classic arcade games and the like. Many are fun in short bursts but a few don't quite play right in comparison to their obvious inspirations. Its really cool they did dozens of these games and even if I have issues with how some play they all show the devs love for this period in gaming history.

This loop of playing more to make more, placing cabinets strategically to boost popularity, and growing your space for the arcade as the story plays out to buy even more machines thereby making even more is the best part of Arcade Paradise. It's a shame its a bit too tough/takes too long to see past doing laundry to get to it.

The 90’s are an important decade for me, my youth, the ages where I’m making memories but am not tainted by being a teenager.
It would create tastes that elements of I still have to this day, even creeping ever closer to 40. There's music I enjoy, art styles I like, toys and video games still dominate my adult mind as much as it did when I was in single digits.

Arcades were a huge part of all this, living in a seaside town, previously having a Sega World in the next town along, all of these elements really added to my discovery of games.
These places are no longer quite the same, usually more about coughing out tickets, mobile tie ins or strange nostalgic movie tie ins.
In the 90s these were new frontiers, top graphics, new genres, fresh ideas. They were loud, bright and exciting and outside of maybe a few places in Japan I doubt anywhere can fully capture the same feeling they had - not without want of trying because shout out to all the arcade bars that exist to keep that dream alive.

Arcade Paradise’s biggest strength is that of a modern arcade bar. You aren’t back in time but for a few seconds you can trick yourself. It has “immaculate vibes” as people younger than me could get away with saying.
The radio station, the music, the colours, even the smaller elements like gum being everywhere really add to the feel of being in 1993. It’s a true love letter to that time with enough honest reverence for the decade that it is willing to poke fun at it.

Arcade Paradise as a game isn’t simply about just the Arcade games and machines, although that is a major element I need to come back to.
From the start your character Ashley has inherited a laundrette (or laundromat as it’s US based) from her father (voiced by that Geralt from Witcher). They discover in the back some arcade machines and quickly realise that not only are they obviously more fun than washing and drying clothes, there's actually more money to be made with them.

This is where the story and the loop of the game starts.
You do the daily errands of picking up trash, pulling off bits of gum, unclogging the toilet and doing the laundry biz of washing and drying clothes in the machine.
All of these are presented with little arcade game overlays, making everything a game and reflecting how Ashley possibly makes the menial tasks not so cripplingly boring.
As you do this you collect the money from the hoppers or the arcade cabinets too discovering where the real money lies and invest it into more machines - of the Arcade variety, not the washing.
Thankfully the game doesn’t just make you do the boring jobs, because it allows you to play these machines yourself - in fact a smart thing the game does is encourages you to play them as the more goals on each cabinet you achieve the more popular they become with the clients.

As the story progresses and more money is made, you get new machines, knock down a few walls to make the arcade larger and more but really this loop stays the same throughout.
For a while I found it very moorish, addictive in its own way.
Into work, clean the rubbish away, throw the big bags out, pick the gum, get some washing in the machine go to a game I like, hop off when my (in game) watch tells me a wash is done, put drying in, more washing on, back to the game until my watch went again, back and forth until closing time, collect money to put in the safe - hope I have enough for a new machine or upgrade and move on.
It’s a good loop but a limited one. Arcade Paradise does a few things to try and keep this fresh, arcade machines can break, playing a variety of games helps because you can make them all earn more money.
You could even just stop washing realistically as the games are where the profit is but even when giving up on the laundry part of the business the games themselves only have a limited appeal.

As I said earlier, you can play the machines and this is one the game’s strongest and at the same time weakest points.
The nods and the choices of types of games you get as the story progresses is smart and well thought out, but that means many of them feel like old crap that no one really wants to play anymore, at least not for more than five minutes and sadly I found that’s how I felt with the majority.
The minority that I did enjoy however were good to great, some clever takes on games such as “Racer Chaser” which is Pac-Man but in a GTA skin that if you get caught you do have a chance to get to another car and move on.
My favourite of all, at least it’s the one I’m sure I sunk the most time into, was Blockchain - thankfully not a game about cryptobros but a puzzle game that plays almost exactly like drop7 but with occasional power-ups.

Whilst Blockchain and some others deserve praise the issue lies here that actually, none of these games are better than free things you can play on your phone.
The in-game versions of sports you get (you can figure it out but no spoilers) are some of the worst versions I’ve played in video games.
The in-universe major game, a beat ’em up, you get later into the story was also disappointingly poor.
There were moments when I was playing this and wondered if maybe licenses would have helped, ignoring money and legal reasoning, you could have had big Namco or Capcom games fill the cabinets. However I don’t think that would be better as the question would then become “why don’t I just play a collection?”. I appreciate the devs made lots of little games and I didn’t expect every single one to be a banger, it’s just sad that barely any were.

In the end Arcade Paradise was like a sandwich with chores for bread.
The start of the game is a lot more of the washing side of things and whilst that may not be the smartest thing to keep people interested I think it was intelligent in terms of storytelling and I guess brave.
However towards the end I got to a stage where I was simply waiting for money to come in and the games were boring. I would literally open my phone to play Marvel Snap as Arcade Paradise ran in the background, picking up the pad only to fix a machine or collect money from a full hopper.
Then even when enough money had been made for an upgrade the choices were so limited that they never felt like they mattered.
A whole business simulation element felt so flimsy and tacked on, I could understand why it didn’t want to become a full simulator but the line between casual and hardcore could have been placed nearer that side to give the game more meat if you wanted it.
I could possibly write an entire piece here about how I didn’t like the money options, the progression system and lack of customisation but hopefully this one sentence is enough to say - it could have been so much better.

The entire time since finishing this game I wondered if maybe I “played it wrong” maybe I should have been playing this between something else for it to feel more fresh and less of a grind?
I’ve wondered, maybe the game was too long, or maybe too short because all though it dragged the end almost felt too sudden.

There are so many elements of this game I did enjoy, it’s a vision of a game I can fully understand and get behind but it is either missing pieces or some need replacing and without that it never hits the high of being paradise, just simply “a game that I played”.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for August 2023, this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before September 5th, 2022, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

Laundromat simulator.

Arcade Paradise might be where the game eventually gets, but early on players are running a laundromat, having to wash and dry clothes for money, and able to play arcade games in the back while waiting for the machines to finish. Over time earning money will let players expand and I assume play more games. Having to mix time between the laundromat and the arcade machine is challenging, but hopefully, that isn’t as much a part of the title.

The downside is the games aren’t the deepest, and even the few games that are surprisingly deep at the beginning don’t work well in the one to two-minute range players have to play them. There are also 8 games available as DLC, the total price of those titles is almost as much as the base game as well. While there are 35 titles contained in the game, immediately seeing a hand held out for more money always rubs me the wrong way. Also, some of the games are a bit “meh”, so I’m not sure if the ones I haven’t played yet will be amazing.

Pick this up if you love the simulator genre and old arcade games. There’s a lot of work that went into this, and I’m curious how much deeper the game goes, but I’m not sure how long this one can keep my attention. Still, the idea of running an arcade is one of those things 90s kids always wanted to do.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/NNSGtTcLXoI

Weirdly, I enjoyed my time with the game, but rating this above a 4/10 seems way too forgiving. The gameplay is unfun chores mixed with mostly unfun arcade machines. There's never enough time to do what you want to do, and the story progression is painfully slow, to the point that I'd be SHOCKED if many people have seen it to completion.

But, I have no hatred for this game. I don't know if it was just the frame of mind I was in at the time, but I liked it enough to play over six hours if that says anything.

The idea is great. Build your own arcade at the back of a laundromat and have the ability to play on all the machines you buy for your arcade. As you progress, you get more machines to buy and play on as you expand your arcade.

The laundromat management part of the game is designed to be a side hustle to the arcade and to be monotonous on purpose. It ties into the theme of the story in many ways, but even so, you still spend so much time on it that you end up wishing it was more fleshed out. Unless you ignore it completely, which is possible to do, and only play arcade games.

You are at the mercy of the arcade machines, if you don't enjoy them, there is not that much else to do. I liked 5-6 of them, but the rest I had to force myself to play on. The thing is, the more you play on them, the more money they bring in, so if you don't play on them a lot, you are gonna earn slowly, something that comes close to killing the game towards the end where you have some of the bigger expenses.

This game is a lot more than I thought, but then also became less. From screenshots and a couple of videos, I thought maybe this was just a little virtual gallery as a way to hide what is only a retro game collection, but no, there is an actual light work sim game in here.

You start off by running an actual landromat, doing people's laundry, with like one arcade cabinet in the back, and the game's major twist is that not only can you actually play the games, but achieving various tasks actually levels up how popular that game is and how much it earns, so there's clear incentive to play and become at least decent at the many arcade games included.

The game, when its at its best, is some 10-15 hours of casually doing some basic laundry, keeping your establishment clean, picking new arcade cabinets and setting some decent scores in order to level them up. All while some classic synth music streams through terrible, static-filled radios older than I am. If you don't like the crappy radio, you can purchase a jukebox that mutes all other music, including the games, so you can keep jamming your favorite synth or album-oriented rock constantly while hopping between tasks. The gameplay is simple, yet cozy, and the vibe is there.

But, unfortunately, that's also about it. You can't really do much to change the order in which you purchase cabinets, there's basically zero customization for your arcade and the game is too short and just kind of stops when the game runs out of plot. The developer posted on Reddit that they would've liked an endgame where you keep expanding and buying new shops but that it wasn't possible. It's too bad they couldn't even get some basic customization in here, like more free placement of cabinets and maybe some simple wall paint, because the game's biggest problem is how it just stops and it feels like there's little to no reason to continue. Sure, all games end, but this one feels like it ends too early and like there's too much potential left.

A metalinguagem desse jogo é absurda, pois traduz exatamente a vida real. Gosto como ele é uma enorme coletânea de clássicos reimaginados, e a progressão (por um bom tempo CHATA) do jogo acaba te fazendo jogar todos os jogos disponíveis.
É como ter uma coletânica de Arcade normal, só que com um incentivo e uma ordem pra jogar todos os jogos.
No endgame, você basicamente só precisa jogar, e é maneiro ver o crescimento do personagem principal no jogo.
A trilha é super subestimada e o fato dela efetivamente começar quando você compra uma Jukebox é até nostálgico, selecionar manualmente as músicas e etc.