Hot Springs | 温泉 (Onsen)

Every few years a game comes along that is really a fireplace with a user interface. Hot Springs | 温泉 (Onsen), by Peach Party and publisher Low-Hi Tech, is a Japanese hot spring you keep running in the background of your working day: steam, lanterns, koi, cats, and a small economy of garden ornaments doing their best to lower your heart rate.

It arrived on Steam in October 2024 and never quite got the attention it deserved, which the community puts down to it being quietly competent rather than loud. It is an idle game, a decoration sandbox, a set of minigames, and a sort of multiplayer campsite, all at once.

What the loop feels like

You place a lantern beside the stream, and the water sound syncs with it, and something in your shoulders unclenches. That's Hot Springs.

You are halfway through a work task when you notice the fireflies need catching, so you take a two-minute break, catch them, earn some currency, and go back to work. That's Hot Springs too: the minigames are designed as pomodoro breaks, not sessions.

Later, a friend's cat avatar wanders into your garden because they logged into your world. That's the multiplayer, and it is exactly as gentle as it sounds.

What you actually do

The structure splits four ways. The garden is a decoration sandbox with ornaments, koi ponds and fish to cultivate. The minigames (gardening, cooking, firefly catching) earn the in-game currency that buys more of everything. The pets are cats, which you raise and fuss over. And the atmosphere layer is deep for this kind of game: preset scenes, custom wallpapers you can export to your actual desktop, your own music files dropped in (wav, ogg, mp3), and wish lanterns you release with messages that other players can find floating across their water.

Online co-op lets friends visit a host's garden as a cat, a fish, or their own avatar. Progression is measured in unlocked assets and ambient options rather than exponentials; the numbers go up slowly and on purpose.

Where it creaks

Players report achievement bugs (a real problem only if you chase 100%), and the realistic expectation, per the community itself, is a small passion project that will not receive major expansions. The idle systems are ambient rather than deep: if you want exponential curves, this is not your game. It shares a developer spirit with Garden In! more than with a tycoon.

Playing it today

Hot Springs is a Windows release on Steam with Workshop support, achievements and cloud saves; no verified mobile version exists. Nearby in the catalogue: Lofi Aquarium and Desktop Cat Cafe for more ambient company.

Verdict: a quietly beautiful background world that earns its few dollars many times over, provided you want serenity more than systems.