When I heard Arcade Paradise was coming to VR, I was very interested in seeing what it would offer. As with PowerWash Simulator I had never played the flatscreen version but heard so many good things about it.
If like me you are unfamiliar with the game, you are Ashley, who’s father has given him a laundromat to run and is expecting results from the business. You soon discover the arcade cabinets in the back are generating quite a bit of income. Meaning your goal now becomes building up the arcade, while juggling managing the laundromat.
Managing and running the laundromat is all down to you, meaning you will be doing the washing, drying, collecting the rubbish, depositing the money and cleaning the toilets. Why is it important to make sure you are doing all of this? Well the money from working and from the coin slot machine and arcades are going to build up your funds for expanding and adding more to your arcade.
With the move to Virtual Reality these tasks all become very manual as you collect baskets to wash, take them to the washing machine, move the dial to correct wash from white, mixed or dark, put in the clothes and start the process. Once the washing machine is done, you then move the clothes back into the basket and go the dryer, make sure the dial is on the correct color to match the basket, add the clothes and set that to do. Finally, you then remove the clothes from the dryer back to the basket, and drop the basket off on the opposite work top you picked the washing one from.
While the machines are doing their thing, you need to manage you time around the other tasks. Be going into the toilet and cleaning this. Collecting rubbish by picking it up and letting go for it to be in the bin-bag (only shame being you have visible bin-bag in your opposite hand), and once it is full going around the side of the shop and disposing of the it. Both of these have an arcade game feel, as you get a timer for cleaning the toilet and get a point system for throwing the bin-bag in from different distances.
Then at points of the day, you want to be going around and collecting the money and depositing in the safe, which means collecting from each machine, going to the office and entering the safe code to deposit all the money you have collected. Also within the office you will find a computer, where at times you will need to check emails, messages and also order everything for your arcade as it gets bigger and better.
While doing all of this you have the temptation of the arcade in the back room, why do you have this temptation? Because you can play them all and they all come with their own versions of classics. Of course you can leave your jobs and play games, but remember you need to make money to improve the arcade. So you really are between a rock and hard place of working or having fun.
One thing you will find is, that you are soon finding ways to make your tasks more manageable in anyway possible, so you can have time in the arcade, as you are only there between working hours. If you push yourself passed closing time you will pass out from exhaustion – meaning you cant just think I will stay after closing and play them, as I found out on day one.
From my time with the preview I have found the old adage of ‘work smarter not harder’ is something you soon come to learn, especially when the temptation of an arcade is the other side of the wall.
Arcade Paradise VR is coming soon to Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, and Meta Quest Pro. Full review coming at later date.
