Having completed and rinsed poor Rusty of his retirement, I went in search of a new idle game to live at the bottom of my screen. Enter Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen.
I actually picked up Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen in Early Access, but held off on my review due to all the updates. However, with the summer DLC looming, I thought it was time to give Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen the review it deserves.
Simple But Charming
Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen sees you taking over your own Onsen in various locations. Starting with a single bath, it’s up to you to decide how to decorate and expand your Onsen to attract local animals.
Each of your fluffy animal visitors has several preferences you need to provide for, including refreshments and a hot spring temperature. The more facilities the animals enjoy, the more money you earn. Thus, the cycle begins.
It’s a simple gameplay loop, but wonderfully addictive.
Meet The Locals
Once your doors open, the locals will come pouring in. Providing them with the perfect spa experience will earn you gold to spend in the store, but incredibly happy animals will leave you a special message.
These notices contain much of the story as animals leave you little notes about their experience or why they chose to visit that day. A recent update added special events to find in each map, giving players a reason to return to old levels, and there’s a shallow plot running through the messages from the local governments.
The character designs are adorable and are built upon in these notes with photos depicting your clients’ adventures. Everyone has a little bobbing animation as they walk and will hold the items they have purchased before jumping into the bath. They’re minor details, but they add to the overall presentation incredibly well.
The Fantastic Facilities
You unlock new baths, decorations and other facilities by completing challenges. These “awards” are pretty simple, and you can complete most of them naturally over time. Getting 24 of them also gains you a key to unlock a new area to start over in, where you get even more items.
There’s a great collection of vending machines and refreshment stands for your customers to interact with and many decorations to discover. Some of these are locked behind the new levels, alongside special animals, and will yield more regular customer events to gain you more star currency to spend on upgrading your staff.
The Tools For Success
Although you start with everything you need to run your Onsen, you later unlock different desks to manage and promote your business. These also require you to spend your star currency, but you only need to have one of each. Some are simple facilities that you can assign your staff to, like the soap kiosk or the flyer stand, while others focus on the general running and upgrading of your Onsen.
There were already a lot of cool tools for you to investigate, but a recent update added a franchise management desk. This allows you to earn special coins, which can be used to purchase clothing and hats for your avatar to wear. It’s cute, but it didn’t take me long to unlock them all. However, after several hundred hours of play (OMG I was joking but it’s 80 hours!), I don’t feel like unlocking things is the main goal in Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen.
Delegate, Decorate, Delight
Sitting idly at the bottom of your screen, Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen offers a cosy, low-stakes management sim. Plonk down your facilities, see what makes your customers happy, and leave your staff to it while you go for a potter in the real world. The thing is, there’s not a lot you have to do to complete each zone, and I never saw red despite neglecting staff upgrades and staying on one floor.
My interactions came mostly from renovating and decorating my levels for the perfect aesthetic to accompany me on my work day. I left the game running to collect gold with little care for what the customers wanted and came back to make use of my profits. In this regard, Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen reminded me of Animal Crossing’s Happy Home Designer back on the DS: your choices are ultimately pointless as you cannot lose.
It’s got style. It’s got substance. But it’s still an idle game at the end of the day.
Pixel Perfection
The amount of detail hidden in the pixel backgrounds and set pieces is phenomenal. Having simpler character designs allows them to stand out among the intricate patterns on the floor, and great effort has been made to add in steam and water animations that fit naturally into the style. I also really enjoyed having the ability to sit outside and wait for the sun to rise, changing the colour palette and the later addition of large windows that reflected your location.
Accompanying this, there is also a nice selection of music tracks to unlock, even though I mostly played the game muted due to work focus.
Clean Up Your Twitch Chat
As a Twitch streamer, I am always looking for new and fun ways to get my chat involved, which was one of the big things that drew me to Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen. Simply type in your channel name and connect to chat, and your viewers’ names will appear on top of a critter who enters your onsen. It doesn’t do much more than this, but it’s cute, and my chat seemed to especially enjoy watching their avatars go to the toilet or slip on a puddle.
One Last Soak
Maltese’s Fluffy Onsen is well presented, funny, and kept me coming back over many hours and weeks to see what I could discover next. Some things were more obscure than others to find, and
I do not doubt that I will dive in with the upcoming summer DLC, and can see it accompanying me on many Twitch streams for a good while longer.
DEVELOPER: Sinkhole Studio, Moonlab Studio
PUBLISHER: Sinkhole Studio, Paleo
PLATFORM: PC
