Update log
Full Hotel Architect update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Repeated intro
Hello Hoteliers,
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- UI and audio
- Maps
This week we are launching Hotel Architect into 1.0. It has been a long, challenging and FUN journey which is why, today, we're feeling rather nostalgic and sentimental looking back on everything that has led us up to this moment.
So, we thought we'd share some highlights from the development journey, alongside early concept images and even a few bloopers, to celebrate just how far Hotel architect has come! You will notice in a few places throughout this blog that a 💡 emoji will appear next to certain features, this indicates where community feedback has helped to shape Hotel Architect!
We'd also love to know at what stage along this journey you joined us, so please let us know in the comments below!
The Early History of Hotel Architect
Pathos Interactive was founded back in 2015 by three Swedish students: brothers Christoffer and Alexander Andersson, along with their childhood friend Accel Sjöström. Everything began in a basement, specifically, at the home of the Andersson brothers' parents.
Fuelled by a shared passion for gaming, they initially dabbled in creating small video games as a hobby. It didn’t take long for them to realize the potential for something greater. The hobby turned into a full-time business in 2016 during the development of Bannermen: a fast-paced, real-time strategy game set in a fantasy medieval world. Bannermen was released on PC via Steam in 2019.
Soon thereafter, Pathos began prototyping a new game with an expanded team. This prototype evolved into what is now Hotel Architect! You can read more about the origins of Pathos Interactive and what sparked the initial ideas behind Hotel Architect in one of our earlier 'About the Dev Team' blogs here.
The First Prototype (2020 - 2021)
In 2021, Pathos Interactive presented the prototype of Hotel Architect to Wired Productions and it was mutual love at first sight! From these early concepts and the playable prototype, we (at Wired) knew that Pathos were onto something very special...
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Between 2021 and 2022, the UI underwent a major transformation, evolving into something much closer to what we would recognise today. You can see some of the early concepts in the screenshots below:
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Then, in 2022, we officially announced the publishing partnership between Pathos Interactive and Wired Productions alongside the reveal trailer for Hotel Architect! This teaser trailer provided the first public glimpse of gameplay for our upcoming hotel management and tycoon game, whilst also showcasing some of the locations planned for the game.
A fun trivia fact for you all is that, during our initial announcement, we actually shared screenshots of the New York and Las Vegas maps, which ended up arriving midway through the Early Access journey instead.
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The Early Access Announcement, Demo's and Playtests!
Fast forward to 2024, and we were ready to announce that Hotel Architect would be coming to Early Access! In our Early Access Announcement trailer we revealed updated gameplay footage, the core features of the game and the four locations that would be arriving in Early Access: Gothenburg, Paris, St Anton and Santorini.
And yes, there was a point in time where the locations appeared in a different order to what we know today!
Before we were ready to dive into the world of Early Access, we decided to run a series of playtests and join the Steam Next Fest to get valuable player feedback.
Gamescom 2024
First, we attended Gamescom, where we showcased the very first
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