All work and no play makes Tom something something...
QUEST LOG #9: ARCADE PARADISE
Some mild spoilers for this one… ye be warned.
Arcades are, for the most part, at least where I live and in my experience, a thing of the past. I grew up in Brighton which had a fair few, and I’m not far from there now, nor am I far from other seaside attractions (which is the only place I’ve experienced them). I walked through some amusements the other day actually, and while it was nice to see that the scene wasn’t totally dead on its back, it isn’t what it used to be. Computerised gambling has taken over for the most part, and of the old guard, only the coin pushers seem to be hanging in there still. A few arcade cabinets remain, but so few… So, considering this, and neither having the space, or a few thousand spare to buy a cabinet of my own, I must turn to the virtual to solve an issue of mine, as I so often do. This is I suppose, is the modern way. This all came about as I accidentally renewed my Game Pass subscription a few days too early for Starfield. I scrolled helplessly through the gargantuan list of games I could play in the meantime, and I stumbled across Arcade Paradise. I had heard about it quite a while back, and was intrigued by the premise, but I hadn’t gotten around to playing it and having paid my money for my game pass, I thought I may as well make use of it!
The game opens with a suitably retro aesthetic, and an equally suitable soundtrack. After seeing a line of arcade cabinets (along with a tumble dryer), the camera lands on a screen in the foreground, which acts as the menu. Points here, as I always enjoy a menu that is set within the game world itself (which you’ll know if you read my Mafia posts). Click new game, and we begin! Rock music blasts then and a short hand-drawn sequence plays out which suggests the morning routine of our protagonist. Apparently he doesn’t have much passion for washing other people’s clothes… at last, a relatable character! This little intro blends seamlessly into the game, and the last drawing (of King Wash, the place where the game takes place) fades out to show the game. We then gain control of our character, and we’re free to explore the world – or at least one street and a launderette.
We’ve been given the assistant manager position, and we’re to create a success of our family business, and our dad, who we hear from quite a bit, will be either complaining at us, or attempting to inspire us with his words of wisdom throughout our adventure – how can we fail? After a brief tutorial on the controls, we walk through the front door of the launderette and along with the enjoyable background music, the first thing I noticed upon entering was the rather impressive graphics. At this point I had a look at what else Nosebleed Interactive (the developer of the game) had made, and they’re pretty small in terms of team size but have done quite a lot in the relatively short time since they were established. Still, for a small developer, I was surprised at the visual fidelity of the game.
After acclimatising myself with my new surroundings, I put on a load of washing and began picking up rubbish, which seems to be strewn everywhere about the place. After a couple of minutes doing this, our watch beeps, informing us of the need to unload the washer and load the dryer. After doing this, the toilet gets blocked, and we must get to work plunging… really super fun stuff. After this we find the key to the back room. There we find a few old arcade cabinets - perhaps we could use these to our advantage?
The details here are fantastic, and as with the rest of the launderette, the cabinets are rendered in exquisite detail. From there we enter our office and it’s the little touches I like - we see our PC looping an animation of the classic Microsoft maze screensaver and I’m immediately transported back in time by this, perhaps more so than anything else. The PC is where much of our interactions take place, and is where both the story will be driven, and where we acquire new cabinets, upgrades, and renovations. In the office we find a safe too, and once we’ve banked what little cash we’ve made, we’re told to log on and to buy ourselves another arcade cabinet on the game’s equivalent of eBay. We pick one up called Strike Gold and it seems it was $500 well spent. We end our first day there by visiting the bus stop across the road and as our next day begins a moment later, the delivery of our new cabinet occurs! Very dramatically, I might add. After bursting out of its crate with much fanfare, we pull up the plans to our shop and decide where to plonk it. We also got told off for leaving work early the day before – whoops… just like real life. After settling the new cabinet in, we enter to find that a load more rubbish has been left behind. Damn litterers. After tidying up, we do a few loads of laundry and squeeze in a bit of Strike Gold!
After playing the in-game game for a bit, I wander around the launderette and have another nose about. As I said, the details are very impressive, and realism of the environment has been achieved to a high standard. Weird that the customers who frequent the establishment pixilate into nothingness as you approach, but I suppose that’s normal in a launderette? I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually set foot in one… No, after checking, it isn’t normal for people to vanish through the deterioration of their fidelity, but at least it’s a good way to get rid of them if they are in the way. I had a moment where I considered the wisdom in using the last day of my holiday playing this game, but the more I played it, the more I seemed to enjoy it. Eventually we expand, replacing washers and dryers with new furnishings and arcade machines, and this cycle repeats several times throughout the game. The management is lite here, and the bulk of the game is in its repertoire of varied and fun arcade games. This fun is somewhat of a struggle to get to sometimes however, and the management part of the game often stands in the way of the substantial and enjoyable gameplay. At some points I found myself clock watching… as if I don’t get enough of that in my real-life job. In order to advance, you must make money, and in order to do that, at least in the early stages, you need to do the rubbish collecting, chewing gum picking, washing, and drying quite a lot.
After a lot of quite tedious work, interspersed with some moments of fun arcade gaming, we secured the $1000 we needed to expand. The back room is then kitted out nicely with space for many more cabinets. We also get an excellent carpet fitted and we even get a sandwich board by the front door to advertise the burgeoning arcade. After this though, it’s back to the daily grind, and at times it feels as though we’re doing community service or something, just switch the backdrop for a motorway and give us a prison jumpsuit. Also, being surrounded by these customers… it’s a little eerie. They are definitely on loan from the uncanny valley, and if they were real, they’d certainly be serial killers. British serial killers though, as they were queueing outside the toilet.
The next few days pass with tedium, and every morning I’m faced with a sea of rubbish. Coffee cups, pizza and burger boxes, cans, bottles, socks… gum. I suppose catering my business to gamers, I should have expected the accompanying filth, especially from those who can’t do their own washing, but still. Despite the rather boring washing and drying mechanics, it’s quite a thrill to see if you can get them all going at once – more so getting them to finish at a similar time. Efficient washing does yield more money, so it’s worth the effort, at least in the early game. After getting enough done, we unlock the next website, and through this one, and using a crazy currency known as pounds, we can purchase an assistant to the assistant manager – along with other various upgrades. In order to collect enough quids together to buy these upgrades, we need to tick off items on our to-do list, which resets daily. These are pretty easy for the most part and are rather varied. They can sometimes be completed just by running a certain cabinet for x number of minutes. Sometimes they are to do some laundry – sometimes you have to do none. And sometimes it’s just as simple as picking up a certain amount of rubbish or gum. I thought it’d take ages to get the £200 needed for the assistant, but I managed to rack up the money within a few hours of play – not all of it was fun though. A perk of this system is that it has you engage with all aspects of the game, challenging you to play some games that you perhaps weren’t initially into. None of these are forced either, so you can ignore whatever you don’t want to do.
When picking the aforementioned gum, or rubbish, I often found myself starting a game by mistake, or picking the wrong thing up. Would have been nice if there was a separate button for rubbish and for starting games… not the end of the world, but it happened far too often and was more annoying than it should have been! Another nuisance is the background music – while I have no problem with it in and of itself, the variety is almost laughable outside of the cabinets, and it will slowly drill into your psyche and eventually render you clinically insane… probably. Luckily, like I say, there is variation when playing the actual games and I can’t stress enough how good some of these are.
Eventually we expand the arcade again, this time taking over the adjoining garage, and as we fill the space with arcade goodness, I find myself longing for the real thing. Arcades were noisy, smelly, and expensive – but great, especially as a child. The game is great too, not perfect, but great none the less – even for just going some small way to fulfilling the arcade fantasy. This sheen began to shine a little less bright though as another grindy section of the game arrived. The management is just so much weaker than the wonderful array of games on offer that it really feels as though you’re doing work between gaming sessions. I suppose in that way, the concept is a success, and it’s clear that the creators wanted to convey how boring work can be. Big old tick there. I found myself leaving the game running for stretches, popping back to the computer to move my character to the bus stop and back again, starting the days over and letting the business rack up money in my absence in order to afford the next addition to my collection of cabinets. This tactic got me quite some way, and eventually I was making $1000s a day. The launderette was slowly turning into a proper arcade, taking over the main purpose of King Wash. As my little gaming empire grew, there came another problem, my assistant was dealing with the coin collecting, but the growing array of cabinets began breaking. This is where our repair skills (flicking actual bugs off circuit boards) comes in. A clever little minigame, but incredibly tedious after the first couple of goes. Another thing, along with the laundry, gum pulling, and rubbish picking that I could do without. Upgrades do good work here though, getting certain upgrades will lessen these tasks, but not remove them entirely. Although if they were banished from the game, I’m not sure what you’d replace it with.
Eventually Starfield game out, and I played that for a bit. It was the reason for my renewing my Game Pass after all… That will perhaps be a story for another post, but suffice to say, I revisited King Wash rather quickly, despite my grievances. When returning to this reality, I did find myself mashing space bar a lot in the hope of jumping. No such joy however – the launderette and arcade are a no jump zone! The ability to jump would have been a pointless (but welcome) addition to Arcade Paradise though. A bit like how Jar Jar’s ability to speak is a pointless (and unwelcome) addition to Star Wars... Anyway, more work and more money earned. Eventually I unlocked the pool table, and this injected another dose of fun juice. I can’t tell you how many lunchtimes at school were spent playing virtual pool. I’d have rather played real pool, but you get what little entertainment you can when you’re at school. This filled the downtime spectacularly and combined with Blockchain and Zombat 2 meant that I was shirking my responsibilities as an assistant manager on the daily.
The story of Arcade Paradise is pretty simple, delivered mostly through voice messages, emails, and an instant messenger program, but it’s solid. The little slice of world outside of the launderette’s walls conveys the passage of time, being slowly developed over the course of the game, and the subtlety of it really is quite nice. Eventually our deeds catch up with us, and it transpires that we’ve bribed someone – or our sister has? Can’t quite recall that bit, but either way our dad finds out and gets very cross indeed. He decides to sell the laundrette, gets rid of the cabinets, and makes us get a normal job – TWAT! We made a little investment earlier in the game, so perhaps that will save us somehow? Because what happens next is soul destroying. Another crudely animated scene plays out of us heading to our new job, and there we find ourselves sat in front of a conveyor belt with a long line of unaligned and untapped boxes. We must align and tape. This goes on for a considerable amount of time. Fade to black as the week of this continues.
I know this is meant to be a waking nightmare of real world working – but Christ, the controls for the tape dispenser are crap on PC. I recommend using a controller at this point if you haven’t already been. While doing this tedious part, the dad character really reveals himself as a bit of a bastard. When I saw the bit where he said we couldn’t write I was ready to plant my fist into his face – like hell MATE! Anyway – after a week of work, we find ourselves back in the launderette and everything we’ve accomplished is taken away. All the cabinets we purchased – earned, are packed away and boxed up. This is quite like my actual house at the moment as we’re in the limbo of moving, so it was particularly pertinent. As we wander about the darkened and empty interior, we get a message from Dylan (the bloke whose company we invested in earlier) just as we’re about to pack up the last bits of our former life. This is where our investment comes through! Dylan transfers us our returns and we promptly visit the auction website where our dad has decided to sell the property. We hover our mouse over the button and after a moment relishing our change in fortune, we buy our business back. Suck on that dad. We then get the bus home and the next day we’re back – and the game we invested in (which saved us), Knuckles and Knuckles, is being delivered to our door.
We’re back in business, and you know what that means? Back to the grind. The last few cabinets we need come to over $50000 – a third of the cost of the entire property. Seems off to me, but we’re making pretty good income now, although the tedium of money gathering hasn’t entirely gone away. Eventually we unlock all the upgrades, all the refurbishments, and all the cabinets, and after the last vestiges of the launderette are replaced on the inside, all that’s left is to save up for a new sign. Once we’ve got this, our dad calls us and tries to make amends - about time! We then fade to black before getting a flythrough of the arcade, first showing the new and rather apt name – Arcade Paradise. And we get a good look around our arcade and we see the credits over the top of this, showing the names of all those clever folk who made the game. After this, we then chat to Dylan on the computer, and he links us to a video – the music of which would likely be happier at home in a Tony Hawks game.
With the story done, and the arcade fully kitted out, we’re free to continue playing. We have access to whatever game we want to play, and we can play to our hearts content. Overall, I had great fun playing Arcade Paradise. I know that the laundrette aspect is supposed to be boring, but does it really have to be that repetitive? An actually boring game, even if it’s only a slice of it, doesn’t make me want to play it – so there’s the problem. It wasn’t SO boring as to stop me playing though, and perhaps I’m complaining a little too much. Perhaps it hit the sweet spot? But there are things I’d possibly change, and some things I think might have been better implemented – an ability to hire more workers perhaps to take over the day-to-day jobs? Or more of a focus on the business simulation perhaps? The management of the machines themselves is quite interesting - adjusting the difficulty and pricing, but this too is very limited. There is some change to income with placement of the cabinets and the amount they are played, but it is shallow. These are just little gripes really, and at the heart it, the actual arcade games, well, they are incredible. The inspiration from classic games is evident in them all, but the unique take, the attention to detail, the fun… it’s fantastic. I’d love to see an option implemented so games could be played without the work sim bits getting in the way, but once you’ve gotten far enough into the game, these can be ignored for the most part anyway.
So there we have it. Arcade Paradise is a great game – especially if you have game pass. Can’t argue with basically free (a tenner divided by over 300 games). Despite my complaints about it feeling too tedious at points, the game is certainly worth your time, and I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a go. Have you played it already? What cabinets did you enjoy the most?
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