3/5

Not Another Weekend is an overrated game and I have to give it a "thumbs down" as a warning to people who will NOT like this game. While the nostalgia for games they don't make anymore is strong enough to make gamers of a certain vintage have a decent time playing the game, it's not "good". And, more than this, about 25% of the "puzzles" are actively bad. This is a game that breaks the contract with players fairly early that puzzles shouldn't be "stupid". You should play this game with a guide and if you get stuck for more than a few minutes, look up the solution and move on. There is a very high degree that the solution is something you would literally never figure out. The worst puzzle, for example, features a solution that is a bad joke. In order to quickly thaw a frozen meatloaf, you need to not use the available hair drier in the game, but rather instead take the frozen meatloaf to a couple having a first date so that a man can tell a bad joke and "break the ice". This is, again, something I would literally have never figured out had I not looked up a solution. Not EVERY puzzle in the game is like this, but enough of them are that it is not a good use of time to struggle.

The other complaint about the game, and this is really a design flaw and missed opportunity, is that the game misuses "do not distrub" signs. The game takes place in a hotel and the player is often required to enter people's rooms. The actual game world is relatively small and the NPCs move around the hotel at scripted moments. THusly, sometimes you can go into a room and sometimes you cannot. There is a great opportunity there for them to use the Do Not Disturb Signs, which exist, to let you know what rooms you can enter and which ones you cannot. However, the game forgoes this, and will often have NPCs displaying Do Not Disturb signs when you are meant to enter their room. And yet when you cannot enter the room, the player character will chastise the player for trying to enter a room that has a Do Not Disturb Sign displayed. It makes no sense. And it presents an actual gameplay problem because sometimes you will be overlooking something and unable to progress the game only to realize that a room you could NOT enter before suddenly became able to be entered with no notice to you the player that anything had changed and the Do Not Disturb sign not changing.

So, in the end, Not Another Weekend is a nostalgic game that is clearly a labor of love for developers trying to harken back to a bygone era. You can't fault them for that. It's worth it just for the nostalgia. But use a guide.