Giveaway of the Day - Jane’s Hotel

Jane’s Hotel: A Review {of sorts}

Jane’s Hotel has been given away twice previously. The first time in April 2008 when it received 79% of 764 votes and 100 comments, then it was given away again in August 08 when it received slightly less positive votes which were 66% of 670 with 86 comments. The download size is a modest 17.9Mb in size and when installed it is 67.3Mb in size. Installation is simple, with just a readme and combined setup and activation module unzipped from the downloaded zip file.

The default location for installation is C:\Program Files\Realore\Janes Hotel, but you can change this during installation. I would recommend installing it to a different drive other than your root drive if you have a second drive installed as your computer’s overall speed can be reduced as you fill your root directory.

Go to comments from April 2008

Go to previous comments from August 2008

Introduction:

The following review is an edited version of my original review. I’ve added some video footage of game play plus some off site reviews from other reviewers. Jane’s Hotel appeared in the fall of 2007 following in the wake of many others of this click management game, for example; Wedding Dash, Sally’s Salon, Paradise Pet Salon, Dinner Dash, Turbo Pizza, Turbo Subs and more recently Gourmania, Amelie’s Cafe and Beach Party Craze to name just a few, and has since spawned at least two other Jane’s Hotel games called Jane’s Hotel: Family Hero and Jane’s Reality. Despite the plethora of games in this genre (as with most other genres) Jane’s Hotel is decent enough though, especially if you don’t have many of this genre. Apart from those given away with advertising from Gamehouse I haven’t yet seen any free versions of this genre available anywhere apart from the browser game I link to below.

The following is Realores introduction to the game

Quote:

Assist main game character, a girl named Jane, make her dream come true. You begin with a small two star hotel at the outskirts of Jane’s native town. By carrying out customers’ wishes attentively and quickly, you earn money and achieve excellent reputation. That will help you get another star to your hotel class. Help Jane to make most captious customers happy: choose refined furniture, build a golf course, and please your customers with exquisite drinks and good meals. Don’t forget to have an eye on your customers’ mood, for your goal is to make them want to return to your hotel again and again. You’ll feel great watching Jane transforming her small motel into a five stars extra class hotel. There is a special assistant at your disposal, the chambermaid. She’ll kindly take care of cleaning rooms, changing beds and cherishing flowers, for your customers love natural plants that make the atmosphere pleasant and comfortable. Meanwhile, your main task is to communicate with customers. You have to settle each in their rooms, offer them coffee, discuss latest news, and do everything in your power to keep customers pleased. Great graphic arts, amusing characters, and relaxing soundtrack – everything will please your senses throughout the game. 40 interesting levels, 4 hotels (you begin with a two star hotel and transform it into a five star one), possibility to buy various furniture and services.

Reference accessed 12th March 2009

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The Game:

As you would expect, the game starts of very easy, with only a couple of tasks and few customers, but slowly the pace is turned up a notch and by level 5, you’ll feel the urgency after trying to juggle all the tasks you have to complete or allocate to your chamber maid.

Completing tasks improves your popularity and you earn cash and extra tips from your customers depending upon how quickly you carried out your tasks, Whenever a task pops up you’ll see an indicator in the background, which changes color from green to orange to red the longer you leave the task undone. You’ll rarely see the indicator turn to orange or red in the first few levels, but as indicated above from level five onwards, you’re in for a stormy ride, unless you’ve got lightning reflexes. Though you can group tasks; that is if two or more residents want coffee, provided you click on the coffee machine and then the residents icon before Jane has delivered the first coffee, all residents will be served with only one visit to the coffee machine. This can save valuable time and also earn you more money. At the end of a level you can spend your money on objects such as plants, newspapers, settee and TV, gold fish, lamps and phones (to name a few). Each item requires both money and popularity points before you can purchase them. Once you’ve purchased an item your customers have to pay more for the privilege of staying in your hotel. The popularity rating is related to the mood of your customer which is correlated to the color of the indicator I mentioned above. When buying a specific item you’ll be informed about how that particular item improves your hotel.

As you progress through the levels more tasks are added to your workload, for example on your first day all you have to do is give room keys to your customers and serve coffee. On the second day you will have to water the plants you bough with your first days earnings as well as order your chamber maid to clean customers rooms. The chamber maids control panel is located to the bottom left of your screen whereas tasks that you have to complete as the manager of the hotel appear next to each room that is occupied.

As you would expect, each successive level gives you more tasks to accomplish. For example giving newspapers as well as giving coffee to residents and getting the maid to clean the rooms and water the plants. As you build up your reputation you eventually earn the coveted star that will enable you to move on to the next hotel, which has more rooms than its predecessors.

The links to my screen captures will also give you an idea as to what to expect from this game. There are several pages devoted to the help menu, each page showing you pictorially what you need to do. The options menu is very simple with music and sound sliders as well as a window and tips toggle.

Other points of note:

• There are five hotels to play each being one star higher than its predecessor
• There are 40 levels to play
• Loads of upgrades
• Even the décor can be upgraded

System Requirements:

o Pentium III 700Mhz or better
o Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows 98SE, Windows Vista
o 128 MB RAM

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Resources:

Videos:

See video of game play HERE

See more video of game play HERE

See even more video of game play HERE

Images

See all images on one page

See slidshow HERE

See Googled Images HERE

Other reviews worth reading:

Read reviews written by Reflexive users HERE

Read review by Gamezebo HERE

Read several user reviews HERE

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Conclusion:

Despite there being loads of this type of game, and it not being my favorite genre I still think it’s worth a good 7 out of 10 for playability and family fun. The levels are well thought out, and become very challenging by the time to get to your fourth hotel. Though if you already have several of this genre you won’t find much new here. The game is free standing which means you can play this from a pen or other external drive and may even play from a CD. You’ll need to create a seperate shortcut from the CD version for you to be able to run it from a CD. (Copying this program to another computer after the giveaway is over contravenes the agreement you make with the giveaway project so technically is illegal)

Thank you Realore and the game giveaway for an excellent time management game.

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Other information

Music:

You can place your own favorite music into the sounds folder though you will first need to convert it to the ogg format then change the name to the appropriate name (Music1 to Music4). You can find some free audio converters in the giveaways freeware library which can be accesed by going to the bottom of the giveaways front page and clicking on the freeware librarys hyperlink. You’ll find the audio and video section by clicking the appropriate link to the top right of the freeware librarys home page. (link down for me otherwize I’d have provided the link for you). You’ll probably find freeware alteratives on the net. Just google free audio converters

You can also play Jane’s Hotel for free online anytime:

Play a free browser version of Jane’s Hotel HERE

If you have any issues with this game, especially later in the giveaway day try posting your problems and queries over in the forums. I’ve also posted this review in the forums

Go to forum Review HERE

Due to it’s success last weekend, the free trial of the full version of Unreal tournament 3 has been extended for another weekend, so if you don’t own the game, but like some fun death matches, capture the flag and several other modes get a hold of the steam client and get the game downloaded. The steam client is free.

You’ll find details over in the forums:

Details of the Unreal Tournament free weekend can be found HERE

Hi Misty, regarding your query posted yesterday about buying the expansion to Archibalds adventures. I would contact Rake in Grass via their support page and explain that you got the game via the game giveaway and that you would like to buy the expansion pack. They may just give you the updated version for the price of the expansion. The advantage of this would be you’d have a fully functional version of the complete game that you’d legally be able to copy to any computer you own; wheras the version we were given although a standalone and thus able to transfer to other computers it would actually be breaking the giveaway agreement and therefore illegal to transfer it after the giveaway period was over. You can contact them via the following address:

click HERE to go to RakeinGrass’s support page {for Misty}

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downloaded the game last time it was made available, and still have it great game, thank you