At first glance, Arcade Paradise seems like another entry into the veritable mountain of Sim-Jank titles we've come to expect from Steam's liberal view of curation. And to be sure, there will be some of that, especially when you get your first glance at what appears to be the usual collection of prefabbed assets (it's on Unity, and you can definitely tell). But if you give the game a chance, and put up with a few dozen loads of laundry for a bit, you'll find there's a bit more under the hood than expected in terms of gameplay, narrative, and the satisfaction of growing your business from a crappy laundromat to a nostalgic Arcade refuge. In the beginning of the game, you start off working in a dilapidated laundromat which happens to have a handful of arcade games in the backroom, a room that frankly looks like no customer should assume they're allowed back there. During this time your primary focus is on maintaining the laundry business, putting in loads, switching them (why aren't customers doing this themselves? What the hell is that token machine for, then?) picking up trash (they're animals), unsticking gum. and unblocking the toilet. The immediate thing you'll notice in all of this is that everything is treated like a minigame. Laundry tests your speed in completing it, gum challenges you to pull strong enough in quick succession, and the toilet has you looking for the 'sweet spot' for the most 'damaging' plunges. None of it is particularly compelling on its own but that small bit of presentation goes a long way in keeping you here longer than expected. Of course, your primary motivation is to make enough money to buy more machines and ultimately manifest your dreams of a personal arcade into reality. This creates an interesting 'work-life balance' because the primary way to make your arcade machines profitable is to play them often, and complete the goals therein. This increases their traffic and allows you to set the price and difficulty higher, owing to their popularity. But you only have so much time between loads of laundry, which will be your primary source of income for the early goings of the game. For some players, the laundry is viewed as a chore. And I'm conflicted on how to feel about that. Because I agree - laundry gets annoying, and just interrupts you from what you'd rather be doing. But at the same time, it is a literal chore. That's the point. You'd rather be playing arcade games, and you can only do so between laundry tasks, and as annoying as that can be, it adds another layer of...thrill, perhaps? It adds some thrill to the arcade gaming experience, where the otherwise simplistic games take on new urgency when you've only got maybe 2 minutes to do whatever it is you need to do with them. And ultimately you dream of the day when you don't have to do laundry at all, a primary motivator for success. In this way, the game works as intended, even if that means grumbling to yourself whenever your wristwatch (don't get me started on that damn watch) beeps WASH at you while you're trying to get those last few money stacks in Racer Chaser. The arcade games themselves are a mixed bag. They seem to span an era of roughly between 1972 and 1998 (the game itself is set in 1993, so that knockoff Dance Dance Revolution should really be blowing people's minds). Some of them are okayish, others kinda boring, and a choice few are genuinely addicting. Many of them are recognizable as being based on something more famous. Shuttlecocks is just Pong, with no real variation from the classic formula. Communists From Mars is a pretty close approximation to Missile Command. Line Terror is a somehow more annoying version of Qix (we have history). Other games are recognizable in their inspiration but with a new twist. For instance, Racer Chaser's gameplay is overwhelmingly based on Pac-Man but is thematically also inspired by Grand Theft Auto. It adds the new element that once you're caught by a cop car, you jump out of your vehicle and make a run for it to another vehicle to continue the game. Another example would be Meteor Madness, quite clearly based on Asteroids but with the added element of tasking you to grapple crystals blown out from the rocks and bring them to the delivery point. There's a pretty wide variety of games just in the base game alone, and I won't speak to the quality of the DLC games as I only purchased one, the pinball machine (Which is...fine). Somewhat surprisingly, the game has a narrative woven into all of this, surrounding your disapproving, business-tycoon father's reluctant decision to let you run his old laundromat, and your collaboration with your sister working at City Hall to help you transform the place into a thriving arcade without the old man's knowledge. The story beats are a bit predictable but I appreciate that some effort was put into it, as it's not really what you expect out of a game like this. The only voice acting you'll hear is from your crankshaft of a father, and the actor is putting on this very comical hoity-toity voice ("Hello Ashley...this is your father." Very organic). Proving your dad wrong might not motivate most players to move forward as much as the simple promise of buying a new cabinet but it does give some sort of context to the whole thing, even if the game tremendously glosses over the actual logistical challenges to owning an arcade (there is literally no overhead. That's very convenient!) Overall, this is a game I picked up on sale for $7 in the hopes of distracting me for a little bit from existing in America, in October of 2024. What I figured I'd get bored with in two or three days turned into something that I honestly couldn't put down, with the allure of the delivery truck recklessly dropping a new game at my doorstep always keeping me playing for just one more business day. I don't think it's a game for everybody, and I think it's something that might appeal to a more 'oddball' demographic, or at the very least, nostalgia seekers. But for a game that greatly exceeded my admittedly modest expectations, I am more than happy to award it the prestigious Blue Thumbs Up of Quality.
Read more