Mandarin Hotel: Check In the Guests

How to play: every guest speaks Mandarin, and reading them is the whole game. The hotel runs itself — she calls the next guest up, fetches the key cards, tags the bags, loads the carts, wheels them to the rooms, brings them back, runs the vacuum round a checked-out room and walks back to her desk, all without being told. You never tap a person, a door, a bag or a cart. What you answer is two questions, both in a row of buttons along the foot of the floor.

Take as long as you like. There is no time limit and nothing to beat the clock to: a level is 10 questions, and it ends the moment you answer the last one. One question is up at a time, and while it is up the whole lobby stands still — nobody walks in, no queue moves and nothing drains — so you can read it as slowly as you need. How long the level took is recorded on the end-of-shift card, and your fastest run at each level is kept.

One: what does she say? A guest reaches the counter and four Chinese lines appear. One of them asks how many are checking in — 几位入住？— and three ask something else. Pick one and that is what she actually says, so read before you tap: 几点 asks the HOUR, 多少钱 asks the PRICE, and 你要几个 is the same question with the measure word for THINGS. Get it wrong and they answer 什么？— she has to ask again, and it counts against you. Get it right and they say how many they are and what room they want, both at once: 两位。我要一间双人房。

Two: which room did they ask for? The second row offers the rooms that would actually take them — 单人房 a single, 双人房 a twin, 家庭房 a family room, 套房 a suite — and one of them is the one they said. The measure word is the point: 一间双人房, and one phrase in four leaves 间 out so it cannot be guessed from where it sits. Pick the right one and she checks them in there at its own rate, with a tip. Pick a wrong one and they are checked in anyway — you are paid the cheaper of the two rates, you get no tip, and your streak breaks. The readout above the floor holds what they asked for while you choose, and tapping the guest asks them to say it again — free, but it costs seconds. That is the only tap on the floor that does anything.

Room numbers are said digit by digit — 一零一 for 101, never 一百零一, which is the quantity — and each door wears its number in characters and its type on the sign above it, so the words on the rows are the words on the walls. A room whose door mat matches the party's colour pays a $12 bonus. You cannot lose a level — nothing is timed and nobody gives up waiting, so nothing ends the shift except answering its last question.

The Level row is where on this lesson tonight's shift sits — the same levels the course wall is divided into, numbered the same way. A level's shift is played at the reading difficulty the lesson level has reached: the early levels let guests in at half the rate and keep the room numbers in numerals, the help thins as the levels climb — the room request fades sooner, and stays gone longer — and from the level that reaches the sim's hardest rung the words stay as hard as they get while the lobby keeps getting busier. A level is only offered once you have reached it; play a wall tile at any level and that level's shift deals. The Difficulty row is how much of each line is written: Beginner writes the pinyin and the English under every line, Intermediate writes the pinyin alone, and Advanced gives you the characters with nothing under them. New game reopens that card, so both are asked for at exactly the moment a fresh level is wanted.