I dropped off the Switch version originally because I found the laundromat sim elements fairly tedious and they prevented me from enjoying the games. This was about 5 hours in when I had 10 machines. I stopped and didn't pick it up until this week.
I just rolled credits on the story, have all 35ish machines, and have cracked 15-17 hours into it. I had basically stopped right before the game got good.
Arcade Paradise is a first-person sim where you manage a laundromat your father gave you and slowly build out an arcade machine in the back of the store. You raise money doing laundry and picking up trash at first so you can buy more machines and gain income from there.
At first, you will barely be playing the arcade games and only be doing tasks at the front of the store, but you quickly gain more machines and rely less on the tedious stuff. Over time, you stop doing laundry altogether and just focus on maximizing arcade income by modifying the difficulty and cost of machine plays and beating challenges to make the game more popular.
It was when I realized the end of doing laundry was in sight that I really started to love this, and it was when I started playing the arcade games that I really started to love the package put together here.
It's not perfect to be sure. About 25% of the arcade games aren't much fun (like a real arcade), and even as you progress you can never fully eliminate tasks like trash and debugging machines (though you can reduce them). Also, I ran into a few glitches and hitches from time to time.
So why is this a 4.5? It is so much greater than the sum of its parts. The arcade games that are fun are really fun, and the feeling of expanding your arcade feels just about as good as expanding your house in Animal Crossing. Watching your daily income go up and the intentionally tedious tasks disappear is also extremely satisfying. Also, the story is really pretty good! A satisfying tale about generational expectations and the meaning of personal potential.
You have to eat your salad before you can get to your steak and dessert, but what's on the other side of that salad is an excellent-but-flawed sim that I believe is well worth anyone's time.
Misc thoughts:
1. Switch version is pretty good. I recommend turning on performance mode, switching laundry to toggle instead of hold (to protect your thumb), and expanding the FOV to limit motion sickness.
2. Play with the arcade management settings. Tweak the cost/difficulty until you get the most money per hour you can (usually Medium difficulty at first), then jack it up to hard as you play more and accomplish more goals.
3. There's a bit of a grind at the end that I got through by idling the game while machines built up money. It was a little annoying. Like I said, greater than the sum of its parts.
I just rolled credits on the story, have all 35ish machines, and have cracked 15-17 hours into it. I had basically stopped right before the game got good.
Arcade Paradise is a first-person sim where you manage a laundromat your father gave you and slowly build out an arcade machine in the back of the store. You raise money doing laundry and picking up trash at first so you can buy more machines and gain income from there.
At first, you will barely be playing the arcade games and only be doing tasks at the front of the store, but you quickly gain more machines and rely less on the tedious stuff. Over time, you stop doing laundry altogether and just focus on maximizing arcade income by modifying the difficulty and cost of machine plays and beating challenges to make the game more popular.
It was when I realized the end of doing laundry was in sight that I really started to love this, and it was when I started playing the arcade games that I really started to love the package put together here.
It's not perfect to be sure. About 25% of the arcade games aren't much fun (like a real arcade), and even as you progress you can never fully eliminate tasks like trash and debugging machines (though you can reduce them). Also, I ran into a few glitches and hitches from time to time.
So why is this a 4.5? It is so much greater than the sum of its parts. The arcade games that are fun are really fun, and the feeling of expanding your arcade feels just about as good as expanding your house in Animal Crossing. Watching your daily income go up and the intentionally tedious tasks disappear is also extremely satisfying. Also, the story is really pretty good! A satisfying tale about generational expectations and the meaning of personal potential.
You have to eat your salad before you can get to your steak and dessert, but what's on the other side of that salad is an excellent-but-flawed sim that I believe is well worth anyone's time.
Misc thoughts:
1. Switch version is pretty good. I recommend turning on performance mode, switching laundry to toggle instead of hold (to protect your thumb), and expanding the FOV to limit motion sickness.
2. Play with the arcade management settings. Tweak the cost/difficulty until you get the most money per hour you can (usually Medium difficulty at first), then jack it up to hard as you play more and accomplish more goals.
3. There's a bit of a grind at the end that I got through by idling the game while machines built up money. It was a little annoying. Like I said, greater than the sum of its parts.