2 
0 Gym Manager is a management simulator game, developed by Han GAMES and published by PlayWay S.A., who have published various simulator games I’ve covered here at Thumb Culture, such as Thief Simulator 2 and Bum Simulator. Released earlier this week, Gym Manager also has a free demo available for those who want a brief taste of the gameplay.
Cash Gains From Customer Gains
Gym Manager has the player renovating a run down gym in a rough part of town while competing with the adjacent gym, Daddy’s Gym. While you are predominantly managing and running your gym daily, there are small quests to take part in for extra cash, goals to reach and customers to appease. I’m no stranger to simulator games, and I was curious what Gym Manager would entail.
Gameplay
The player starts in a grimy, run-down gym full of rubbish. After cleaning up and naming your gym, you need to purchase brochures via the computer and chase down potential customers in the street. While some of them may reject your offer, others will head to your gym and wait to start a subscription with you.
Besides buying brochures, the computer enables you to do several important things; You can check the current subscriptions with your gym, how happy they are, and see how many days remain of their subscriptions. When you’ve reached the right level, you can hire staff and expand the size of your gym. Hamstagram allows you to check reviews of your gym. To buy tools and gym equipment however, you’ll have to pay a visit to local nearby stores.
Another key component of running your gym is keeping up customer satisfaction and gym cleanliness. Hype up customers as they work out, and assist them when they’re using equipment wrong via a mini-game, which varies between a button sequence, a memory game and a timing game. If customers disturb others, you can gently persuade them to stop by using your baseball bat.
Customers will also accidentally leave items behind, and returning them gives you more positive reputation and a small amount of cash. Cleaning up trash is also very important both for reputation and safety, as customers can (hilariously) slip and rag-doll thanks to banana peels.
Gym Memberships
When you snag yourself a potential customer, a menu pops up with subscriptions and their pricing; 1 Day, 2 Day and 3 Day subscription. The pricing has a slider which you adjust to how much you would like them to pay. Whether a customer accepts or rejects your prices depends on their traits or their satisfaction with your gym (if they’re renewing their existing subscription with you). When their membership ends, they’ll return to renew it. Here you can adjust the price again, or refuse to renew their membership.
After adjusting the pricing, the customer will tell you how many days they’d like to subscribe to. I would prefer it, however, if you could see how many days they wanted before you adjust the pricing. I also dislike that you couldn’t remotely cancel a customer’s subscription. Thanks to a glitch with a gym member disappearing through the floor, they were forever unsatisfied with my gym and taking up a membership slot.
Customer Behaviour
Customers have unique traits which affect how they behave at your gym. Some customers will create excessive trash, some are rich, so they’re willing to pay higher rates for their subscriptions, and other customers were more likely to forget to pay on their way out. Luckily, this is a rough neighbourhood, so it’s perfectly acceptable to chase them down with your baseball bat and retrieve your money (and any equipment they may steal). As you upgrade your gym, you can become more selective about who you allow to join, and hire staff to help you out.
Hiring Staff & Earning Extra Cash
As you level up, expand your gym and increase in popularity, keeping up with thieves, personal training and taking payments becomes more difficult to do alone. Using the computer, you can hire a trainer, a guard and a cashier to ease the burden. Keeping staff in your employ is expensive, so you’ll have to find extra ways to make cash. Besides increasing gym membership prices, players can eventually sell overpriced products such as water and supplements. While quests can help you get extra cash, you may eventually need to engage in more illicit activities to make ends meet.
Crime
Not an aspect I expected to be in a Gym Manager game, but you can carry out illegal activities to get more cash quickly. Speaking to Shady Guy, you can do jobs for him, such as lock picking, or buy illegal drugs to sell to your gym goers. You can also buy cheaper gym equipment from him to save extra cash. Be careful when lock picking, vandalising or peeing on the competition though, as the police will chase you and make you pay a hefty fine. You can outrun them, but it’s not always easy.
Bonus Image:
Final Thoughts
Though I enjoyed my time with Gym Manager and it has some funny moments, I’d describe my experience as standard. It’s enough to enjoy and pass the time, but nothing about its gameplay jumps out at me. I believe these kinds of games are purely for the people who heavily enjoy and gravitate towards simulators and there’s nothing this game has that I believe would draw in a different crowd. Progressing in the game goes very slow and you spend a lot of time repeating things, so it’s a potential slog for those who don’t enjoy this genre of game enough to stick it out.
Overall, Gym Manager is a decent game, but not enough to recommend to anyone other than simulator fans. It’s worth a play, but maybe wait until it’s on sale.
I award Gym Manager the Thumb Culture Silver Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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