Hot Springs Story

Hot Springs Story: Build and Manage Your Own Onsen Resort

Hot Springs Story is a detailed business simulation game from Kairosoft where players design, build, and manage a traditional Japanese hot spring resort. The core objective is to attract guests, fulfill their needs, and ultimately earn a prestigious ranking in a travel guidebook. Players engage with Hot Springs Story by strategically placing facilities, researching new amenities, and directly interacting with customers to increase their satisfaction and spending. This gameplay loop of investment, reward, and expansion provides a compelling management experience for anyone interested in creative city-building and strategic economic planning.

Strategic Facility Layout and Placement

In Hot Springs Story, players begin by constructing facilities from a build menu onto a grid-based map. The primary action involves dragging and dropping structures like baths, restaurants, and vending machines into optimal positions. Progression is tied to creating effective walking paths for guests and utilizing special tiles that boost the appeal of adjacent facilities. This feature directly affects profitability, as a well-designed layout encourages guest movement and increases the amount of money they spend during their visit, forming the foundational economic loop of the game.

Guest Satisfaction and Need Fulfillment

Players must constantly monitor the needs of their patrons, which appear as thought bubbles above their heads. These needs range from wanting to use a specific facility to requiring a drink or a meal. The core interaction involves tapping on these bubbles to guide the guest toward the appropriate shop or amenity. Successfully fulfilling these requests increases a guest’s happiness, which in turn leads to higher spending and tips. This system is central to the Hot Springs Story experience, creating an active management task beyond simple construction.

Research and Development of New Items

A key progression system in Hot Springs Story is the research function. Players collect two primary resources: Gratitude Points from happy guests and coins from facility earnings. They then navigate to a research tab to spend these resources on unlocking new facilities, decorative items, and even types of hot spring water. Each research project takes real-time minutes to complete. This loop of earning resources to unlock better options is crucial for expanding the resort’s capabilities and attracting more demanding, free-spending visitors.

Staff Hiring and Management

As the resort in Hot Springs Story grows, players must hire and manage a staff, including receptionists, janitors, and chefs. This is done from a dedicated management menu where players assign employees to specific buildings. Each staff member has stats that affect their performance, and players can spend coins to train them, increasing their efficiency. Proper staff management ensures facilities remain clean and operational, preventing guest complaints and maintaining a steady flow of income, which is vital for late-game expansion.

Decorating and Combo Bonuses

Beyond mere decoration, placing certain items near each other in Hot Springs Story activates combo bonuses that significantly boost the appeal and income of nearby facilities. Players experiment by placing items like trees, rocks, and lamps adjacent to buildings such as baths or restaurants. The game provides feedback by showing activated combos and their effects. This system rewards creative layout planning and deepens the strategic layer, encouraging players to think carefully about aesthetic placement for tangible economic benefits.

Guidebook Ranking and Endgame Goals

The ultimate goal in Hot Springs Story is to achieve a high ranking from travel guidebook authors who periodically visit the resort. These VIP guests have much higher standards than regular patrons. Players must ensure their resort has a wide variety of high-level facilities, excellent decoration, and full staff support to impress them. A successful review accelerates the resort’s fame, unlocks new gameplay elements, and serves as the primary marker of progression and success in this management simulation.