Arcade Paradise

I want to get back into game deconstruction and such. So I'm trying to get a new article up every Tuesday about a game I've been playing and my thoughts about it. If it sparks a more interesting discussion or thought that I have, I will upload that too.

Arcade Paradise is a 2022 game by Nosebleed Interactive. It is a game that I’d like to call a “Romantic Simulation”. Not romance as how it’s used in terms of genre today, but romance as in the idealization of the past. It’s a game that doesn’t seek an accurate simulation of how one would run an Arcade in the nineties, but rather, it seeks to create an idealistic understanding as to how running an Arcade/Laundromat would feel. I feel that this sort of genre has become a lot more popular in 2025, with many games trying to accomplish a similar goal.

A nice look at what your arcade will probably look like as you progress through the game.

I think that the best place to start when talking about this game is how the game’s story and gameplay elements feed into how the game is played. In Arcade Paradise, the player plays as Ashley, a college dropout who lacks a purpose in their life. Their father, tired of the fact that they essentially live life as a recluse (due to his actions as a parent, forcing Ashley to seek success in his view, rather than their own), have Ashley inherit a laundromat which they discover has some arcade machines in the supply closet. Their goal (and by extension the player’s goal) is to slowly but surely purchase and renovate the building until the laundromat is completely renovated into a video arcade in order to prove to their father that they can succeed in their own way, rather than through their father’s narrow vision of success. 

Early game involves a lot of clothes washing, which doesn't offer a lot of money, but can help progression in a pinch.

This means the overarching loop is pretty simple. In order to renovate the laundromat, the player needs to buy arcade machines, once enough machines have been bought, they can then purchase renovations which will allow them to buy a new set of arcade machines. Everything on the simulation level feeds into this loop in one way or another. The primary form of income is naturally the arcade machines, they generate income on their own which the player must collect from the hoppers of each machine. However, other tasks the player does also feed into this goal. While the arcade is still small, the player can  use the laundry machines in order to wash people’s clothing for extra money. Every piece of trash or gum the player collects also awards a small amount of money upon completion. Machines generate money on their own as visitors come and go. Classic things you need to factor into the business… such as quantity of product, rent, debts, etcetera, are absent from this game, as such things would get in the way of the vibe and story that the game is trying to create.

Collecting income from the arcade coin hoppers.

Arcade management is surprisingly deep, each game has a set of goals that can be accomplished in order to increase the base income of a machine. In addition, price and difficulty of machines can be altered, realistically, I just set it to whatever would affect the income of the machine the greatest. Playing the machine temporarily increases the popularity (and therefore income) that a machine generates, and the location, and the type of machines that it is placed near also increases the income that a machine can generate. The only penalty to this is if a machine breaks down, when that happens, income is paused until the player plays a small minigame which puts it back online. Ultimately, it feels fun to accumulate money, and use that money to upgrade the arcade and increase your hourly income.

The UI is also charming, the player checks their status using a pocket secretary and stylus. They check their email and buy new machines through a computer which connects to nostalgic webpages filled with 90s design sensibilities. Everything that isn’t diegetic is framed through pixelated neon windows with an arcade style font emblazoned on them. It’s a choice which reflects the imagination that the player character has towards the tedious work that they are performing at that time. It’s great.

Picking gum is one of the common tasks you will do, each piece awards 20$.

However, where the issues come in are in a few places. First is the Sterling, a special currency that you get through doing daily challenges, these can be used to buy quality of life upgrades such as the ability to make days longer, automating various tedious tasks (such as depositing cash, or collecting money), or making it so that the arcade becomes dirty less often, and such. These are universally earned through playing the machines that you have bought.

The problem is that all of these games are incredibly derivative and mediocre at best, and universally less polished than their inspirations. For example, in Line Terror, essentially Qix re-imagined as a vector based horror experience, it’s incredibly easy to create a small bump in your path, which is tedious to travel around. This is because unlike the game’s inspiration, you begin drawing on the level the moment you leave the rim of the playfield, unlike Qix which requires a button press to begin drawing. Most of these games are like this, having small imperfections which make it an inferior experience to playing the game that it’s based off of. This wouldn’t be so bad if the daily challenges allowed you to invest a minute or two into the game, but no, the usual expectation is that it takes five minutes of gametime for a challenge to be completed. While it’s a novelty to make the games playable, that novelty tends to wear thin.

This Pac-man style maze game is another big one. The field of view is absurdly low, so in order to get any information as to where you need to go, you need to look at the minimap. Not the actual game.

In addition, days are long, there’s an upgrade which makes them even longer that I had to disable due to how long it made the days last. and quitting in the middle of a day instantly takes you to the next day instead of resetting the current day. That means that sessions of this game feel like commitments to play mediocre games, collect money from hoppers, and occasionally do laundry. 

In the end, I feel that this game is a mixed bag. The atmosphere it creates is really well put together on the business simulation level, it’s just that the meat, the substance of the games themselves are just not there.