Overbooked Steam Demo Review
Played 9 Nov 2026 · 1h 42min
Verdict: Play
A hotel full of animal guests makes card combinations easier to picture, with enough strange interactions to keep me trying after another failed run.
Overbooked reminded me of Balatro, but with a hotel full of animal guests to look after. You're still trying to bring bonuses together and get the numbers up. Having rooms, furniture and guests to place made that feel much more tactile, and it helped me understand what I was trying to build.
**Play.** I really enjoyed this. If you like learning card combinations and finding ways to make them pay off, the hotel gives you a satisfying place to do it. There's a lot to learn, and I would like clearer room targeting, but I kept finding another idea to try after a failed run. Expect more reading and planning than the cute animals might suggest. I finished with a better understanding of what I was doing and some much bigger numbers. And a washing machine that used to be a lobster.
Pros
- Placing rooms, guests and furniture made the card combinations easier for me to understand and plan around.
- Cute animal guests and a hotel that looks good as it comes together.
- Different builds and strange guest effects kept me retrying, with a much better run once the combinations started working.
Cons
- Lots of status effects and bonuses to take in before I could judge some of the guest choices properly.
- Room targeting could feel clearer. I cleaned the wrong room more than once.
How does the hotel work?
Overbooked is a Roguelike Deck Builder from Blackmum. Rooms, guests and furniture come as cards, and you place them into your hotel while trying to earn enough rent to meet the manager's next target. You have a limited number of days to do it. Miss the target and you're fired.
The Management side means keeping beds available, cleaning rooms and deciding when to draw more guests. People waiting in your hand won't hang around forever, and losing them costs reputation. I was wary of drawing too many before I had somewhere to put them. Later I started doing it deliberately to find the guest I needed, knowing I'd take a reputation hit from the others.
The manager wants a free bed too, but getting him in opens the shop. I missed visits because I'd filled the rooms, which made getting the next purchases much harder. On another attempt I picked a pig who I thought would help me access the shop. He unlocked shop rerolls. That was my mistake, and it turned into my worst run.
Why does placing the rooms make a difference?
It gives the bonuses something I can see and arrange. Early on I placed a room away from the others for a guest who preferred being alone. I could put a corner-room guest where they wanted to be, or choose furniture to improve a room I expected to use a lot.
One guest paid a fixed 45 in any room, so my plan was to put him in the worst one. Other guests needed the better rooms and their bonuses. Those are the sorts of decisions that made this easier for my brain to pick up than just looking at flat cards.
There are timing decisions too. I liked discovering a parrot who got a bonus for checking in on Friday. Later I picked him thinking it was Friday, only to realise I'd just ended that day. I'd worked out what he needed, then got the timing wrong.
You also have to fit the rooms into the space you've got. I bought a larger room and then couldn't fit it where I wanted. On the final attempt I managed to get a three-person room down, which gave me somewhere to put several guests together.
Did the combinations start coming together?
Slowly. My first attempt ended at 321 against a target of 350. I thought I'd been doing quite well. The manager disagreed, and I went straight back in.
At first I was taking guests because they looked cute or because I recognised one useful effect. Later I tried building around students, remembering a card that benefited from having them around. I found the card I was looking for, then realised I'd mistaken its extra rent for a multiplier.
Another attempt revolved around a bull whose bonus depended on the rooms being occupied. I kept trying to get him into the room that would do the most for him, then drawing through the guests to find him again. It still wasn't enough to get me through, but by that point the game had me hooked.
I also started thinking I'd made my guest deck too big. Taking fewer people meant being more selective about who could actually help.
The final run was where the numbers really started moving. A lucky cat was helping the other guests' multipliers, and the snails were putting in work. I got past the 350 target that had stopped me earlier, then cleared a target of 2,000. I eventually went out at the seventh target, with 2,966 against the 4,500 I needed.
I hadn't cracked it, but that was a much better run. There were still combinations I didn't understand, and ones I could see too late to use. The number of different things to try is a big part of the appeal. I was losing, learning something, then wanting another go.
What made it harder to learn?
There are a lot of terms and conditions to take in. I thought a guest being "wiped" meant losing their multiplier. Then the guest disappeared. I spent ages trying to paint rooms before working out that the paint referred to a particular guest who could do it. I was still getting that wrong near the end.
There are explanations to inspect, and being able to look at a guest's bonuses helped. But expect some time spent reading effects that refer to other cards, room types or groups you haven't got your head around yet.
Targeting rooms could feel clearer. I cleaned the wrong one more than once. I couldn't always tell which room I was aiming at. I also hit Day End when I meant to ring the bell for another guest. Those mistakes were costly when I needed to make the most of the remaining days.
None of that stopped me enjoying it. The hotel made the planning easier to picture. Learning all the effects was still going to take longer than one session.
How does it look, and what are the animals like?
The animals and the room-fitting challenge were what caught my attention in the trailer. I liked the hotel once I was playing too. The rooms, furniture and little guests all fit together nicely. I preferred the CRT effect switched off, which you can change in the settings.
Some of the guest ideas are properly daft. I picked a lobster because his card said he'd turn into furniture after five consecutive nights alone. I wanted to see that happen. On the last run he turned into a washing machine, and I put it in one of the rooms.
That gave me something to enjoy alongside the Strategy of getting the rent up. There were useful combinations to chase, but I also wanted to know what this ridiculous guest was going to do.
Game Info
- Full release
- TBC
- Platform
- PC (Steam)
- Multiplayer
- No
- Controller
- No
- Playtime
- 1h 42min
Watch the video review: YouTube
Watch the complete live play on YouTube
Tags: Roguelike, Deck Builder, Management, Strategy
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