AniMansion

A hotel full of animals, and not one of them agrees with the next

You take over a hotel that has seen better centuries. Your job is to take it from zero to five stars: sweep the halls, get breakfast on the table, furnish the rooms, and work out who can stand sleeping next door to whom.

Mornings belong to the hotel. Afternoons belong to the island. Evenings belong to the characters who live there.

Everything starts with who sleeps next to whom

Every guest is a species with opinions about the room next door. Put the wrong two together and nobody sleeps. Compatibility is not printed on a table anywhere: you learn it by hosting them, and everything you learn goes into a codex you keep for the rest of the run.

• Rooms are adjacent, so the call you make at the front desk decides who wakes up happy.

• Guests complain about dirt, hunger, temperature, decoration and the neighbors.

• Every night closes with a satisfaction report, and that report is what moves the star meter.

Cooking is a coverage puzzle, not a menu

Ingredients are shapes. The pan is a board with holes in it. Every morning the tavern cook posts a different board and a different kit of ingredients, so breakfast is never the same twice. Cover the board cleanly and the dish scores. Leave gaps and the guests will remember.

Build it, furnish it, and get scored on it

Chop, mine, forage, fish and dig your way around the island, then craft at the bench in your own room. Furniture has a category that matters: floor, wall, on top of a table, or lighting. Every room is scored for decoration, so furnishing is a system you play, not wallpaper you pick.

Make friends or make enemies. Both count

Every islander has nine hearts. They fill red if you win them over and black if you get under their skin. Both directions progress. Both open quests. Both change what people say to you when you walk in.

The only bad outcome is being irrelevant to everybody.

And for when the hotel is quiet

• Cave floors under the island, with several resources to upgrade your hotel and something broken waiting at the bottom.

• Fishing where the size of the fish sets how far you have to go and its temper sets how tight the window is.

• Liar's dice in the tavern against opponents who each bluff in their own way.

• Character creation by species, breed and color, so you can rebuild your own pet and watch them run a hotel.