Indie game Onsen Master is an upcoming management sim set to launch this coming autumn.
The game is one of many featured on Guerrilla Collective’s Black Voices in Gaming showcase. Onsen Master’s gameplay is simple but offers something complex that players can chew on with its hot spring experience.
Players will be in charge of revitalizing a fantasy island through the power of a beautiful hot spring resort. The game looks great, giving off some Spirited Away vibes too. Fans of the management sim genre will likely have a great time while supporting a good cause.
Onsen is not another cookie-cutter resort management game
Looking at the hot spring game, it’s weird to notice how rare resort games are. Apart from cookie-cutter mobile games, there are no proper resort tycoon games out there.
Many resort management sims offer basic setups and gameplay directed to children. Onsen offers complexity to the much-ignored genre of the management sim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSw-t5yS7bo
For starters, the graphics of Onsen looks like sceneries plucked straight out of Studio Ghibli films. The color is fantastic, which looks like a remaster of the hit animated movie Spirited Away.
The hot spring resort has the right amount of detail and business for it to look lived-in. What makes the game fantastic is its design. The game features characters of color handling the entire resort.
The player needs to handle different customers that seem to come from Japan’s traditional yokai lore. These customers so far include a cucumber-loving kappa, some lost spirits, and even a hitotsume-kozō.
The game also has all the hallmarks of your standard management sim. There is a constant line of customers waiting at the door, a variety of tasks that give profit, and a lot of mess. Players also look like they’re going to throw in the customers into the onsen themselves, which is awesome.
Onsen comes as part of Black Voices in Gaming showcase
Onsen Master is everything that management sim enthusiasts would love. It is entirely different from games like Mondo Museum and Space Haven, where players control the environment.
The game is mostly the main character working out the logistics of the bathhouse and making sure everyone is happy.
“Onsen Master is a hot spring customer management game where players must revitalize various hot springs across the fantasy island of Izajima,” said the game’s Steam page. “Create ingredients to match the various customer ailments, reconnect the communities that surround each onsen, and discover the supernatural world that they’ve long since been disconnected from.”
The game can be a single-player or competitive two-player experience. The game is part of Guerrilla Collective’s Black Voices in Gaming showcase. Onsen Master will be out autumn 2020 and is available as a wishlist in Steam.
Featured image courtesy of Waking Oni/Youtube Screenshots