Mystwood Manor Review

Warning! Before you read any further, this game is intended only for ADULTS since it contains various sexually graphic and suggestive elements that may upset some users. No matter what you do after reading this post, we won't be held liable.

It has only been a few years since Faerin Games started their venture by publishing interactive games on Steam. Despite working in a very challenging genre, they made their first game, Man of the House, quite successful. However, its gameplay was passable, though the game was extremely grindy and tended to force you to repeat the same monotonous gameplay to advance.

Mystwood Manor, on the other hand, has improved greatly in that regard, and the gameplay is not only addictive but also amusing. Anyway, to begin with, Mystwood Manor is not a game for kids or younger players, as it is restricted to people aged 18 and older.

It's possible to describe Mystwood Manor as a narrative adventure, although the game's primary focus is a hotel management simulator. Your primary focus should, therefore, be on the hotel, both on effectively managing the establishment's resources and, more importantly, on ensuring that all clients have a positive experience while they are there.

This should be done in addition to the numerous conversations you will have with various characters throughout the game to advance the plot. If you find that maintaining the hotel is too much of a burden for you, you can enable the in-game settings that let you automatically pass all visitor interactions, lock hotel qualities, and, most significantly, lock your staff's energy meter. These choices are available if you activate them in the game's options menu.

The story of Mystwood Manor is surprisingly deep, unfolding across several sequences throughout the game. You take the role of a young adult who finds himself in charge of a very ancient hotel inherited from his late father. Since his father owed a lot of money to the bank, he must pursue his father's dream of establishing this hotel to repay the debt.

In doing so, he encounters a supernatural mystery that answers many of his questions regarding his father's death and the history of the hotel he owns. Throughout the story, he hires new staff, trains and manages them, constructs additional facilities, and improves the hotel to satisfy his clients' needs.

Mystwood Manor can be played in both Normal and Story Mode. Normal mode is recommended, as it includes most gameplay features, especially if you want to get deeply into hotel management. The best part of the game comes from its management simulation. Planning and renovating the hotel are both connected to its overall star rating.

Obviously, as the rating rises, more rooms and upgrades become available, and higher-level patrons begin to visit the establishment. Even though there are two more hotels, Forest Queen and Royal Stag, besides Mystwood Manor, there isn't any competition bar or anything like that to take this simulation to a more extensive level.

While managing the hotel requires extensive renovation work, your primary task is to assign the right staff to the appropriate services. The condition of the hotel is assessed across four measures: Housekeeping, Maintenance, Health, and Security.

When their numbers fall below a certain percentage, hotel-related facilities, such as the spa, gym, or restaurant, won't provide service, resulting in negative feedback from customers. Each day, you need to adjust your staff four times a day — morning, afternoon, evening, and night — to ensure the best possible outcome from them.

While it might sound easy to assign staff to related services only, things become complicated when their energy bar arrives. Each time a hotel member provides any service, they lose one-fourth of their energy bar, which only refills when they take a break to rest.

When the energy bar is fully depleted, she falls ill and needs medical attention, keeping her from providing any service. However, it's a relief that two of the staff members share common traits regarding the services required by the hotel. So, if anyone falls ill, you can either assign another staff member to handle the same duty or avoid accepting guests who require that particular service.

Unlike other simulation games, Mystwood Manor has ten fixed customers who regularly visit the hotel with different service needs. Each of them has a star rating, and when they check in, the screen shows the number of nights they will stay, the number of points you will earn from them, and the total amount they will spend.

In addition, each guest is assigned a level, and that level, together with their star number, determines their worth. The higher the customer's level, the more stars they have, and the rewards are proportional to that number.

The number of satisfied customers is the most crucial metric. This is another challenging aspect of the game, but it's definitely knowledge worth having. While providing services to customers, they may indirectly request your services, and you need to identify the correct answer or service for that. For instance, they will order a Korean dish, and you'll have to serve them the right one from the three choices on the menu.

While serving with the right choice satisfies them, the wrong one damages the reputation, particularly when you do it three times during one stay. If their requirements are not met three times, the hotel will not be eligible for any award points.

The level to which they are satisfied is of the utmost importance. Their outcomes depend on how often they engage with the game's protagonists. In addition to star points and money, they grant destiny points. These points add up to three bars and can be redeemed from a fortuneteller named Isabella, who is more of a mysterious character in the game.

When you have accumulated enough destiny points, you can visit her at night to convert them into cards and assign them to a staff member to confer extra benefits.

These cards can also be used on your character, granting benefits such as not having to hire someone without pay or having low renovation costs. A limited number of items can also be bought from the store or found during fishing, boosting staff attributes. Each character can hold up to 3 cards in their inventory and up to 3 items.

During the day, you can either explore a few areas of the map, check on staff or a guest to progress their narratives, or attend to your office to ensure higher customer service or faster skill generation of the team. Each customer has a total of 5 distinct interactions to further their narratives; these are usually shorter.

On the contrary, every staff member (all of whom are female) who works for you will have a distinct personality and a narrative to develop. You will learn more about each of them as you move through their interactions and get to know them on a deeper level, mostly from a romantic perspective.

Speaking of romance, you can develop relationships with all eight team members, starting with Julia, Amber, Riley, Kay, Laura, Annika, Hana, and Catalina. Each of them can be viewed through their distinct profiles, which show their current stats, such as how they address you, your relationship progression with them on a scale from 10 to 100, the salary they earn, and their skills and traits.

Each of them has an inventory that can hold up to three destiny cards, three items to boost their stats, and a gallery for each that unlocks a number of their revealing photos. These photos are unlocked after a certain number of interactions when you progress through their narratives.

The progression is shown through a series of tiers, from Tier 1 to Tier 5, with each tier offering three interactions that unlock once the hotel reaches a certain star level. Once you complete a tier for a character, you also unlock a prize for them. This prize determines how they will be dressed when attending to the hotel guest.

Once unlocked, however, you can never return to their previous dress code, as the game's progress is largely fixed in this regard. Since progressing the narratives requires you to collect the prize after each tier, you can only move to the next tier once the prize is collected.

Interacting with these characters is not part of the game's narrative. This is where the story loses a bit of its charm since all the characters are very nicely designed. Each of them attempts to build significant suspense as your relationship grows stronger, but only a shady part of it connects to the game's narrative. Despite this, it's always exciting to interact with any of them. They are all appropriately attractive, and most of the conversations are interesting too.

Sadly, these conversations are all narrative-based and lack voiceover. This means you'll have to read many conversations, which can be testing at times. The only voiceover you can find is during their intimate time, but it's the same voice for all eight girls, which only suits some of them compared to their appearances. The animations are nicely done, and some will please you, but this portion is the least consistent with the rest of the game's presentation.

In the end, Mystwood Manor seemed like a good foundation for future games from Faerin Games, thanks to its hotel management component. Even though it gets a bit grindy at times, it's never dull. You always feel the urge to earn money and advance the game's story and narrative with each girl.

The presentation is very friendly throughout the game, and you end up learning quite a lot about many different things, starting from food types of other countries to fitness tips. Even though the game primarily focuses on adult content, there is much more to Mystwood Manor than meets the eye.