Bad Hotel Good Game

We are, of course, entirely objective here at Scottishgames.  We love all of the developers and games companies in Scotland without favouritism or preference.

There are a few companies though, who do get us quite excited when we hear they’re working on a new game.  We were lucky enough to see Bad Hotel in development, during an impromptu visit to Lucky Frame a few months back.

Even then it looked… odd.  The graphics were gorgeous.  The idea of a Tower Defence game, meeting a Procedurally Generated music app sounded… odd, but right.  Like when chips and cheese became a ‘thing’.

We were big fans of Lucky Frame’s last title, the IGA-nominated Pugs Luv Beats, which combined music making, nano dogs and hats.  Bad Hotel takes this formula and multiplies it with architectural design, Homes Under The Hammer and Suicidal bomb-laden animals to create something really quite lovely (and odd).

Here’s the company’s description of the game…

Bad Hotel is an insane hybrid of a tower defense game and a procedural music toy, with beautiful art and tons of bullets. You are a budding entrepreneur, whose hotel is rather unfortunately located within the territory of Tarnation Tadstock, the Texas Tyrant. Your only defense against Tadstock’s army of seagulls, rats, yetis, and more is to build your hotel as quickly and intelligently as possible, using an array of increasingly sophisticated weapons. The beautiful artwork, quirky storyline, and frantic gameplay all work seamlessly together with a generative music system, which creates original music depending on the player’s actions and decisions. The player becomes a composer, creating complex musical structures to defend their hotel. A vast variety of music can be generated, from delicate beach chillout to country banjo techno.

Yetis.  Country banjo.  Oh my yes.  What’s even better is that in the press pack (yes, they build an awesome press pack too…) it reveals that the game started when one member of staff asked ‘What if you had a tower defence game in which you were defending an actual tower?’

So far Kotaku, Modojo, Touch Arcade and 148 Apps have all fallen under the Bad Hotel spell, handing out stars like complimentary pillow chocolates of love.

Stephen Totillo at Kotaku actually said, “Yesterday, I kept telling my colleagues about Bad Hotel. You need to play this game, I told them. It’s cooler than all of us combined.” and followed that with “I like Bad Hotel so much I’d buy it for you. Get it. It’s for iPhone and iPad. It’s wonderful.”

By anyone’s standards, that’s pretty damn awesome.  Even Metacritic is happy.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bad Hotel is like being broken out of jail by a car full of clowns.  Peculiar, scary, exciting and accompanied by many strange noises.  You need this game.  Now.  Go on.  Buy it now.