Hotel Rush: Merge Story, also known as Merge Hotel, is a merge game with business themes. The main character, Ted, wants to help his grandpa renovate an old hotel. The player assists him with creating tools and ordering items and performing cleanup, repairs, gardening, and other tasks.
Ted prompts the player to use a checkerboard to merge pairs of identical items, such as parts of a toolbox, to create generators that produce additional items when the player uses finite golden lightning bolt energy to fuel the machines. The player then merges these additional items, such as two pairs of nails to form a hammer and two hammers to form a flat-head screwdriver. They can also merge pairs of generators to create more powerful machines.
The player stores unwanted items in a storage area accessible via an icon that looks like a box with a down arrow that's located to the right of a horizontal information and instruction guide below the board. After the player creates enough specific items and earns purple keys for completing their orders, they help Ted renovate the hotel skyscraper.
Hotel Rush: Merge Story begins on the ground level in the first-floor lobby. It prompts the player to spend keys to perform specific tasks. Once they run out, they must return to the merge board and earn more. With each new item, the game sets aside gifts filled with crystals they can use to buy more energy. That said, they can't access the gifts until they're several days into the renovation.
The game supplies the player with currency in other ways. They receive energy and crystals as rewards after they level up, complete daily challenges, and reach other milestones. They sometimes receive a temporary battery energy generator and a key rack key generator. They can also sell certain items using a yellow tag marked with a dollar sign on the guide bar in exchange for keys.
