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I’m all like, “Shit, I want to play more games on this expensive tablet I bought for games.” So I went looking for an excuse to buy a game. Hot Springs Story was on sale. Thus, I bought it.

As you might guess from the name, Hot Springs Story is another simulation game from the people who made the obscenely amazing Game Dev Story. Thus, when you look at the game, it looks pretty well exactly the same, and controls similarly, too. That’s a good thing, but it does force comparisons to the previous game, so I figure I’ll start there.

Game Dev Story is a much more fun premise to a western audience, I think. Running a Hot Springs Resort is fun enough, but not nearly as fun as creating your own ridiculously-named video games. With just a silly name on your games that you come up with, you really get to own your experience a bit more in Game Dev Story, and reliving the history of gaming, as consoles come out, is just a lot of fun.
That said, Game Dev Story was very static. Your office was your office. Hot Springs Story lets you build your facilities more like other sim games on PC. I don’t have a huge history with these games, but it reminds me of my short time with Roller Coaster Tycoon, where you are laying out facilities in a way to make customers walk past them, use them, and enjoy them. It feels like you are doing more in Hot Springs Story. I suppose that’s the main difference between the two games. Game Dev Story has a cooler premise and more ownership, while Hot Springs Story has meatier mechanics.

There are two main stats that every facility has in Hot Springs Story: Price and Popularity. Popularity rates how many people want to use your facilities, while Price rates how much money you get when they get used. Obviously, raising either raises your profits. Popularity can go up by placing other facilities near a place that work together. For example, putting a pachinko machine next to a hotel room is a bad idea, because it is very noisy and bothers your guests. However, putting a beautiful tree to give the room a better view, or a vending machine to have easy access to soda and snacks, makes the popularity of a hotel room go up. Price can go up by purchasing enhancement items. Buy some green tea to stock in your Vending Machine, and you can charge a premium for it, raising the price.

Similarly, your guests fall into many different categories, and want different things. Older customers like having easy access to a massage chair, while students enjoy access to a manga library to relax and read at. Every time a customer type is happy, they earn “XP.” Whenever a type of customer levels up, that type of customer is more likely to come and stay at your resort, and will bring more money to spend on extra activities, like eating at your restaurants. Some customer types must be unlocked by investing in local facilities outside of your resort. For example, if you want hikers to come and stay at your resort, you need to fund the city putting in a local hiking trail. (In a nice easter egg, you can even fund a local Game Development studio, and bring in programmers from Game Dev Story.) There are even VIP guests that you will have to impress to unlock new facilities. Impress the famous Beautician, for example, and she’ll let you open a branch of her famous Salon and Spa in your resort.

What I really think is the best part of the game, though, and gives it some legs, are the various tourism guides you can apply to. These work almost like special scenarios, and work to keep the game interesting after you’ve mastered how not to go bankrupt. Each guide prioritizes different things. For example, “Glamor Springs” caters to a female audience, so you have to adjust your resort to really please women in order to succeed there. Similarly, “Scenic Springs” wants only resorts with the best scenery, and you need to make sure your resort focuses on beauty more than function if you want to succeed there. In Game Dev Story, once you had the strategy, you had it: it was just a matter of grinding levels on your employees in order to succeed. These various guides give you alternate goals that give some replay value to the game, which is much appreciated.

While Game Dev Story is much more charming and draws you in more, Hot Springs Story really is a better game. It’s deeper, and has a level of replay value that Game Dev Story doesn’t. It’s a really fitting sequel to a great game. Game Dev Story may be the easy sell, but if you enjoy these sorts of business sim games, this is a really solid one, as far as I can tell. Give it a try.