Skating Rink 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 64 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.

Skating Rink Story originally released on mobile devices and PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch in 2025, then received a port to Xbox One in 2026. This is a game that fits in that second “cater to guests” category, with players building their ice skating rink to attract visitors.

Skating Rink Story is pretty typical for Kairosoft’s formula for this sort of game. You can choose where to place facilities but not how they’re priced, you can employ staff but can’t determine their hours or pay rate. These sorts of things are determined automatically based on their value – train up an employee and their stats will rise as well as their pay, use an item to improve the quality of a coffee stand and it’ll become more popular and charge higher prices. All standard stuff for a Kairosoft Simulation.

The thing that’s different is that Skating Rink Story has particular restrictions regarding where you can place things, and it’s not really clear what those restrictions are or why they’re there in the first place. From the poorly-localized instructions you’re given, it seems like a lot of facilities need to be placed within some proximity of the rink itself, though it’s not clear why that is. All this guesswork makes it less satisfying to manage the business, since you’re not only denied options but not given a clear indication where the line is drawn or why.

As for the presentation, this is 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 (here presented in an isometric overhead view perspective), paired with upbeat repetitive synthesized music that’s largely forgettable (and a tad irritating). 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.

In the end, Skating Rink Story doesn’t do much to improve on or shake up Kairosoft’s usual Management Simulation formula, it bears many of the same flaws as most of Kairosoft’s games, and it adds a few flaws of its own, making it a guessing game of where you can place things and why. Unless you’ve got a thing for ice skating rinks, I think you’re better off sticking to one of Kairosoft’s other games.

tl;dr – Skating Rink Story is a Management Simulation where players manage an ice skating rink, choosing its layout and facilities and trying to grow its popularity with customers. This is mostly typical fare for a Kairosoft Management Simulation, but on top of the usual odd quirks and issues that brings, there’s also some frustratingly unclear limitations on where you can place some facilities. This makes for a game that just isn’t as satisfying as some of Kairosoft’s other Simulations, and I recommend you play one of those instead.

Grade: C

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