Game: Skating Rink Story
Genre: Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch (Also on iOS and Android, coming soon to Steam)
Developer | Publisher: Kairosoft
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $14.00 | UK £11.69 | EU € 13,00
Release Date: May 1st, 2025 (US); May 7th, 2025 (Europe)
A review code was used, and many thanks to Kairosoft.
Kairosoft are back with their latest release, Skating Rink Story. It shares a similar style to other Kairosoft management simulation games, and we’ve reviewed quite a few of them on LadiesGamers.
Will I be lunging and jumping with grace or spiralling out of control?
Stepping onto the Ice Skating Rink Story
After giving your building a name and selecting a colour for the staff uniforms, Kristen Skids suggests increasing the size of the rink. Kristen does a great job of explaining how to play, and a pointy finger and highlight circle show you where in the menu you need to go if you are unsure.
Ice skating is a skilled sport, so what better way to help your customers than hiring some instructors. There are various recruitment methods, and staff can be levelled up to increase their performance and the reputation of your Skating Rink Story. As is always the case in these kinds of simulations, better instructors come from more expensive recruitment drives available later in the game.
In addition to skating, your customers will want to be fed and entertained, so you’ll need to unlock and build various food bars and shops. Soon you will get a flow of new customers, and development opportunities and whilst some need researching (using points or gold), others will need unlocking via a successful guided tour of your facilities.
The Skating Rink Story Gameplay (Toe) Loop
The in-game social media requests help you focus on developing your Skating Rink Story. Complete requests to increase customer satisfaction and the ice rink’s reputation. Happy customers come more often, meaning more requests, and they will also introduce different customers. So you’ll need to expand the ice rink and lobby, as well as hire more staff to deal with the increase in demand. Then, because you’ve got more space, you’ll need to place more decorations and facilities to ensure your customers are still delighted with the establishment. And just when you think you’ve glided into a great skating routine, you have the option of starting again in a new town. Luckily, the whole of your existing Skating Rink Story gets moved overnight!
You can also organise promotional events at various locations, as well as customer requests. These events increase your renown, which makes your Skating Rink Story appeal to more demographics. Increasing your renown also unlocks new ingredients, like chicken, milk or rice, which can be used in recipes to create food to sell at the outlets in your ice rink. The higher the quality of the food, the more value it adds to the facility and the more gold you receive. The more gold you have, the more promotional events you can run.
Mini-Games at the Skating Rink Story
The ingredients unlocked via the promotional events can be combined into different dishes. To begin with, you only have access to beverages, but soups, food, and desserts unlock as you progress. Dishes are created by choosing one or more ingredients, and then, for a small fee, Kristen cooks them together in her kitchen. The recipe doesn’t have to be exact; for example, vichyssoise is only potatoes and cream, but by adding more ingredients, the dish has more appeal, and you can charge slightly more for it. The created dishes can then be sold at the various food facilities, which increases both popularity and income.
Any of your instructors can enter the Skating Rink Story ice skating competitions. You can level up the instructor, so they have more vigour and skill, as well as teach them new moves. Once you’ve created a routine of their best moves for them, you sit back and watch nervously as they take to the ice the following month. Winning competitions is one of the requirements for ranking up.
Skating to Glory
Every year, at the end of month 12, your Skating Rink Story is evaluated. Each area (instructor, followers, food, lobby and skating area) is given a rating, with the aim to achieve 500. An overall score is also given, although you don’t need to get 500 in every area to achieve an SS grade. In addition to the yearly evaluation, there is also a star ranking system. The conditions vary for each star, but generally involve reputation, social media requests, and competitions. I achieved rank 5 at the end of year 10.
The high score is calculated at 1 pm of year 12, month 3 (about 12-15 real-time hours). The calculation is based on numerous aspects, including how much gold you currently have, your rank and reputation, how many competitions you’ve won, and promotional events you held, as well as the number of recipes discovered and your best recipe rating. After getting your high score, you can continue playing or create a new game+, which carries over certain aspects, like charms gained from requests, how effective items are on facilities, and the discovered recipes.
I didn’t find Skating Rink Story as challenging as some of the other Kairosoft games I’ve played. I still have some recipes to find, but by the end of year 12, I’d achieved full customer satisfaction and completed all the requests.
Skating Rink Story Gameplay
The game works really well in either docked or handheld mode, with excellent use of the touchscreen functionality. The font is large enough to read on the small screen. Although there were no gameplay issues, I was always moving my ice rink to a ‘new cafe’, rather than city, and one of the characters is called ‘Bloody Mary’, which might offend some gamers.
Moving around the menu can be a little frustrating, as ‘back’ takes you to the game rather than the previous menu level, and the music is very repetitive and annoying. However, you can easily zoom in and out of your ice rink.
Skating Rink Story autosaves at 10 a.m. each month, with a manual save also available. However, you can only have two instances of the game per user.
It takes just over 2 minutes to play an in-game month, although this will be longer if there are lots of pop-up messages. The game speeds up overnight, which is the only time you can move your ice rink, so you have to be quick! However, generally, it takes just over an hour to play an in-game year, but longer if you rearrange your ice rink or spend time levelling up staff, attending competitions and making food.
Conclusion
Skating Rink Story is one of the more chilled Kairosoft games. With the on-screen help and structured requests, Skating Rink Story is a great introduction to this type of management simulation game.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot 
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