BATHHOUSE CREATURES
- Hubert Spala
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Already it's June, and I have no idea how time flew by this fast this year. Two jobs, too many things to do or left on hold, too many games to play and review. The FOMO is always lurking in the back of your mind. So it's no wonder that life starts feeling like a management game, everything held together with duct tape and caffeine in a dangerous equilibrium that might collapse if you stare at it too hard. Depending on who you ask, you could call it bad time management. You could also call it the sweet spot between boredom and stress, which brings me to today's game, BATHHOUSE CREATURES.
Have you ever wanted to call ducks, shiba-inus, capybaras, snow monkeys, and even gangster hippos guests in your bathhouse? How about having a fire-spewing dragon and a frog as your co-workers? Do you also want a management game that is more cozy than hectic? This game has all of this.
This game was a lot more fun than I had initially expected from the first look. It walks the fine line between too hectic and too easy, and I would call it more of a beginner's cozy management game. It's relatively short and easy, but it won't play itself; you still have to keep an eye on everything, so the guests don't run out of the building and leave a devastating online review about your sub-par customer service. The gameplay consists of decorating the bathhouse in the first step, by building different bathtubs and adding creature-specific decorations to all areas, to maximize the payment outcome. Once the first guests arrive, fill the baths, seat the guests, heat the bathtubs, and prepare the tubs for the next guests. And start anew.
The part that I enjoyed the most and is, in my opinion, the strongest part, is the characters' dorky personalities and their funny dialogues. I liked their quirky characters immediately after their first appearance. And they left me with a cozy, silly grin on my face after successfully finishing a mission. A few other management games are lacking in this area, only dealing with mostly boring NPC quest givers or guests, where you mostly care about not losing points/ money.
It has some unpolished parts which could be improved and balanced with a little more time. While the pixel art style is fine and pretty cute in itself, it's just very "brown" and muted-looking. All Japanese-style bathhouses look more or less the same, with slightly different layouts. I wish the game had more customization options for the overall look & feel of the bathhouses. So why not have a bathhouse with an outside onsen or bamboo forest feel, for example? Or a snowy landscape with piping hot springs in the background for the snow monkey mission.
I understand that the point of this game is not a sandboxy type building of your own bathhouse and is instead story - and missions-focused, all with the main theme of rebuilding slash upgrading, and helping others to create a better environment for your little community of critters. You are a bathhouse manager, not an architect after all.
More options would have been nice to have, but for what it is, the game works fine and fits the theme.
Also, the UX/UI could be improved in some places. For example, the thin black pixel font on a darker brown background was hard to read. Or the "annoyed" expression above a freezing guest is very small and easy to miss. Small things like that.
The pacing of the levels is good, even if I wish the in-game days could have been a little longer and the overall gameplay had more challenges and depth, since there is no time pressure. I had no difficulties flying through the missions, especially once I unlocked automation options. Because of this, I found it best played in short bursts of 1-2 in-game days, otherwise, the gameplay might feel repetitive.
But in the end, the little critters with their dorky faces, sounds, and pretty cute dialogues won me over. And I had a pretty good time closing up shop in BATHHOUSE CREATURES after the last cute critter left with a happy chirp.
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