Pool Slide Story

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 61 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income, and Epic Astro Story established a Simulation style akin to games like Sim City, where you’re building out a town or settlement. And then there’s a template that has you managing not employees but members of a sports team, something we first saw in Grand Prix Story.

Pool Slide Story originally released on mobile devices in 2017, then a port to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2020, then to PC in 2022, then to Xbox One in 2024. And this is one of the “cater to guests” sort of Kairosoft games, with players building and managing a water park, starting with a simple public pool and gradually adding more pools, specialty pools, and eventually other water features and slides.

By now I’ve reviewed a lot of Kairosoft games, and often they have one of a few frequent issues that really prevent them from capitalizing on their core gameplay formulas, but this time it’s really hard to find any complaints with the gameplay – this is accessible, easy enough to understand, and yet provides a surprising variety of options. You can not only choose the shape and size of your pools and how slides are arranged around them, but you can also add different ingredients to the pools themselves to change their color, scent, and heat level to fit different customer desires.

There are also plenty of shops and other amenities to arrange around the pools, and you can even customize the items they each sell. And the game has a clever little social media account where you interact with customers, even “like”-ing pictures they took in your park. Honestly, this is a rare occasion where I feel like Kairosoft has put in a lot of work to make this feel less like a miniaturized version of a typical Management Simulation and is actually producing something closer to what we expect from a bigger-budget project.

It’s not without its flaws, and some of these come down to typical Kairosoft stuff that has become the norm for them by now – you can’t set prices, they’re automatically determined by your growing popularity. And the conditions to do things like expand your growing park are hidden from players until they unlock them. However, overall I’m really impressed with what Kairosoft has presented here in terms of gameplay.

As for the presentation… well, this is more in line with what we’re used to from Kairosoft. As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals, paired with bouncy chiptune music that works for the setting but gets old a bit quickly, along with simple sound effects. For the most part, everything about this presentation is really endearing, though by this point we’ve seen more or less the same thing in numerous other Kairosoft games.

Overall, Pool Slide Story is one of the best games I’ve played from Kairosoft, and just overall a great Management Simulation. It still feels constrained by Kairosoft’s typical formula and presentation, and it doesn’t do anything to push the genre forward. But overall, this is an excellent entry in the genre well worth checking out if you’re looking for a solid Management Simulation.

tl;dr – Pool Slide Story is a Management Simulation where players build and manage a growing water park. While it still feels restricted by elements of Kairosoft’s usual formula for the genre, this is one of their best games yet in the genre, both pretty accessible and surprisingly customizable. This game doesn’t really push the genre forward in any way, but it’s still an excellent Management Simulation.

Grade: B+

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