Hey, gamers! Tired of playing the Chosen One, the hero that saves the world? Haven’t you always wanted to play a fussy hotel manager with a handful of difficult guests? Of course you haven’t! My God, I’ve just wasted the last three months of my life in a pointless exercise!

But what if I told you that the hotel manager is a flying alien from a gas giant planet? And the hotel is a cluster of weeds? And this bucket of dead fish is really my collection of gold coins? I’m rich, I tell you!

Welcome to the world of Gas Food Lodging.

Let’s bring our cast out for a big hand.

Our aliens are called paddlers. They’re asexual bags of gas (insert joke here) living it up in the atmosphere, high above the thick impenetrable undercloud. Paddlers eat, talk, dance, play sports, and stay in hotels. (That’s probably not all you need for a viable civilization, but I had a strict remit.)

You’re Hische, the hotel manager. It’s your responsibility to make the guests feel at home, and it’s their pleasure to call for you at every waking moment. Cross the weeds, find out what the guest wants, and make it happen. Simple.

In real life, sound doesn’t look like this. It’s actually mauve.

The flashing red bullseye tells you someone’s bellowing for your help. Follow it to the source—though once you get there, you’ll have to chase down the guest, who’s too busy calling you to notice you’ve arrived. Once you’re close enough, the guest will stop. Face em and hit E to get an earful. (The em isn’t a typo. An asexual species requires non-gendered pronouns, and I’ve chosen e, em, e’s. Yes, I’m aware that it makes everyone sound vaguely Cockney.)

Most encounters with a guest will require you to do something, like making dinner or dancing. Fortunately, nearly everything in this world can be accomplished by shaking yourself in some fashion. (A planet of pop stars? The mind boggles.) As you move, you fill the progress bar.

The chef makes the best denatured proteins this side of Low Cloud.

Once you complete a task, you’ll be rated so many stars out of five—much like a hotel rating, oddly enough. At the end, you’ll receive an aggregate score. Oh, and there’s a story, or something, but you can ignore that if you’d rather focus on your dancing and stuff.

Gas Food Lodging. Save the world all you want, pal. You’re still paying for the minibar.

Note: if you’re attempting to play this on an integrated GPU, you have my sympathies. I did all I could to optimize the drawing without losing the visual style I wanted. Didn’t help.