Gym Mania: Fitness Hotel Game

With mostly minor challenges and little variation between levels, the game's easy -- but ultimately not too exciting -- to play. Kids move briskly through a series of tasks in Gym Mania: Fitness Hotel Game -- prepping machines, directing gym guests to them, and addressing their other needs. They can line up a series of actions by clicking on items as they're doing something else. The game could potentially have a positive effect by reinforcing some useful habits, like scrubbing down each machine after it's been used, and they can expand and develop an entire chain of gyms after fine-tuning their first one. The gameplay involves time management, decision-making, and other critical thinking skills.

Guests tend to come and leave in clusters, which can make trying to cater to them stressful -- and tapping on the correct person can be tricky, if you're playing on a device with a small screen, such as a phone. Kids should be able to play for quite awhile without any pauses due to running out of lives. But the game starts suggesting you buy things fairly early on. In addition to special ticket-based items that appear as pop-ups, kids will be taken to the Shop section periodically, where the game suggests they purchase amenities such as a vending machine. If the amount of coins earned by playing isn't quite enough for it, they may feel like they have to spend real-world money to progress in the game. The biggest detriment, though, is the repetitive format. Even with the addition of new gym items, speedier character capabilities, and other new aspects, kids will be doing the same few things. Trying to reach the requested goal in each level, such as getting a certain amount of likes from gym guests, may keep some kids coming back -- but after doing the same thing over and over, others may lose interest and promptly check out of Gym Mania: Fitness Hotel Game.