Sunset Motel Review

If you’ve spent dozens of hours in House Flipper or Gas Station Simulator, you already know the intoxicating rhythm of the “renovation sim.” Sunset Motel takes that formula and gives it a sun kissed, roadside American twist. You aren’t just cleaning a house, you’re reviving a dying business one motel room at a time.

There’s no heavy narrative here you are the new owner of a motel that has clearly seen better days and thrown into the deep end. You start with two beat up rooms and a dream. Your job is to gut the interiors, fix the issues, and design a space that doesn’t make travellers regret pulling off the highway and spending their cash. As you progress, you unlock more rooms, better furniture, and eventually, auxiliary businesses like a pool bar, gym and car wash to truly maximize your profit but the work that must be done to get to that point can be very stressful.

Even though on the surface it comes across as a relaxing, low-pressure management sim that focuses on the tactile satisfaction of turning a “dump” into a “destination.” You soon realise it isn’t such a walk in the park, and you are having to maintain the premises during check-out phases as well as doing laundry work, checking in and moving suitcases and making cooked meals. Eventually you gain more stars as an indicator of how well your motel is doing but you are still having to run around to the market and back making sure everything is fully stocked whilst under the constant pressure of the timer going down on other tasks needing to be fulfilled.

When levelling up you gain access to a tonne of assets that can help transform a dingy dark room into a cool little pad. There are more things to unlock the more you level up naturally, the motel and allows you to remove old décor and input new to gain stars in each room allowing you to charge more per stay which is vital to keep your motel operating. When you hit certain levels and XP you get chance to hire staff members to automate some jobs and take the load off as well as levelling your character to either make more profit or just make gutting out / decorating more easier and quicker to turn profits.

Outside of the motel you do get opportunities to do some quests with a local mechanic and antique collector to unlock things that aid your progress as well as break the gameplay up a little and give you reason to kind of grind this out in between.

The game is relatively short, with most players reaching the “end-game” automation in about 8-10 hours. However, the recent Caravan Update (included in the Xbox launch) adds a whole new layer with abandoned trailers you can flip and rent out as “glamping” spots in the desert. This significantly extends the playtime for those who love the decorating aspect and people who want added stress on managing both the caravans and the motel.