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Hotel Samoa

#5709BGG ↗

2010 · 3-6 players · 60min · weight 2.09 · 1,114 ratings

no digital port yet
BGGEnrichedDeep analysis5Sources1RulesPickDeep dive
Rating
5.73
Users rated
1,114
Owned
1,800
Wishing
124

At a glance

What playing it feels like, broken down.

Core loop

Play a price card simultaneously as bid and room rate; tourists fill cheapest hotels, highest bid wins upgrade tile.

What it gives you
How strongly each kind of experience comes through (0–3)
Sensation
0
Fantasy
0
Narrative
0
Challenge
2
Fellowship
2
Discovery
0
Expression
1
Submission
1
How it works (3 mechanics)
  • [3]simultaneous_action_selection— “players simultaneously choose one of their price cards — indicates bid for upgrade and room price
  • [3]sealed_auction— “Simultaneous Action Selection + Auction / Bidding — price card revealed; hidden stake mechanic
  • [3]multi_use_card— “price card indicates both bid for building upgrade and price set on hotel rooms — dual use
Under-the-radar score: 0.18

Archetype fits

How well this game shape maps to mobile archetype templates. Composite is a weighted sum of the 10 fit dimensions.

ArchetypeCompositeLTFSessionComboArcShare5inOnboard
Snap
Sealed_auction with multi_use_card perfectly mirrors Snap's hidden play → reveal tension, and bluff_info_asymmetry is the highest dimension here: you must read what price others will play to underprice them. But 15-min session is far from 3-min Snap and there is no faction/location identity to anchor the meta.
4.904.0436476
Balatro
Multi_use_card (price card as bid and room rate) creates dual-axis tension, and sealed_auction with simultaneous reveal gives some combo-depth feel. But engine growth is shallow — tourist accumulation is additive, not multiplicative like joker stacks. No late-game exponential payoff exists.
4.806.0536466
Cozy
BGG: Auction / Bidding — Open tier fires (cap 5). Tourists preferring cheapest hotels means outcompeting rivals is the core fun, which clashes with cozy no-fail tone. No Pattern Building or Tonal-cozy primitives present. Multi_use_card creates tension, not comfort.
4.305.0535376
Coop
No cooperative mode. Simultaneous_action_selection + sealed_auction is inherently competitive. Bluff_info_asymmetry (reading opponent price cards) is PvP inference, not communication_constraint. There is no shared-fail-state mechanism available without fundamental redesign.
4.305.0525376
Wordle
15-min session is 10× Wordle's target. No procgen puzzle seed and no shareable grid output — the result is a cash total, not a colored grid. The dual-use price card is clever but maps to zero Wordle affordances.
4.006.0315376

Sources (1)

Inputs to rules-card synthesis. Click any pill with ↗ to open the original source.

LLM memory0.10