A simple yet beautiful game. In the short time it took me to get through this narrative it made me cry multiple times, even in its first 5 minutes. As a transgender woman who has always struggled with the anxiety of navigating women's spaces I found a kindred soul in Haru's experiences, words, and thoughts throughout the story. Although I can see how one can interpret the story as a hugboxing, saccharine, feel good story, I find there is a lot of truth in Haru's experience.

Haru herself is a typical transgender woman a few years into her transition. She seems to pass relatively well and her friends and family seemingly accept her as Haru. However, it is made clear that she has not fully legally or medically transitioned. Her legal name, for example, is still her deadname. Haru, like most trans women, is clearly insecure about her perception from the world around her and existentially terrified of making other women uncomfortable. It is that anxiety that the game’s first and honestly, most resonating ending is the result of. If Haru declines Manami’s offer to go to the hot springs the game ends as Haru is unable to take the leap and risk discomfort in pursuit of companionship with her friends and social integration as a woman. On a first playthrough, this immediately brought me to tears. I’ve had conversations that felt identical to that one, my fear and anxiety stopping me from feeling like I belong alongside the cis women in my life. Most of the other endings are far more optimistic but made my eyes water all the same. My favorite of them all is Erika Ending 2, in which Haru spends time alone discussing her own problems with Erika and explaining the dilemma of transness to someone willing to hear her out.

I think the strength of this narrative lies not just in Haru but in her two friends, Manami and Erika. They reflect two different perspectives that the outside world may have on transgender people. Both ultimately kind and supportive but flawed in their delivery.

Manami is a vehement trans ally to Haru, views her as a woman, and would do anything for her. But it is abundantly clear she does not understand why Haru acts the way she does, she does not understand how crippling dysphoria and social anxiety can be for transgender people, and at first refuses to learn. She doesn’t want to pry into Haru’s identity and make her uncomfortable and therefore, cannot truly understand her.

Erika on the other hand is far more inquisitive and blunt. She is clearly supportive and kind to Haru but does not know how to navigate conversation with a transgender woman. She stumbles over herself and makes a few coarse comments that would make any transgender person uncomfortable. But it is her curiosity that in the end causes her to understand Haru far more than Manami ever had. Her sympathy allows her to sit and listen to Haru rather than simply refusing to engage and just accept her as a woman unconditionally. In their conversation alone, Erika learns more about Haru’s identity in one night than Manami has in years.

These opposing methods of support create a compelling dichotomy that explores the tribulations that transgender women in particular experience even from their strongest allies. Stories like this one really resonate and feel truly empathetic to the trans experience. I have never experienced a narrative like this before, and it's truly helped put a lot of my own thoughts into order about my own identity.

foreword
I was looking around on backloggd and found this then bought the android collection on a whim because I can't sleep.

I got ending 2 so my review will be based off of that.

review
When I saw this game I thought the artstyle was cute and I thought it might help me understand the situation in Japan more and maybe I can also learn some more of my girlfriends situation.

you see, that's what I thought while going in. Instead, I'm surprised how much I instead related to a lot of it.. some dialogue hit so hard that I started to cry. I've been ignoring my gender struggles for a while that probably won't change but this was surprisingly more suspenseful and comforting then I expected going in!

..or I'm just sleep deprived, that's also possible.

closing word & final score explanation
I usually don't do proper reviews because all of my ratings are extremely personal and not me comparing it to anything else so let me say that this VN is not the best thing I ever played but it's perfect for what it is and that's all that I need to give this a 10/10. As for why I made this review it's because I'm bored, no really, that's the only reason why I played this at 6am it's now almost 8am this is all I've been doing for the past 2 hours because I'm sleep deprived and don't want to try and sleep again yet.

..also its a game that I feel could deserve a proper review.

would I recommend this?
if the description speaks to you and you at least don't mind VNs sure! I'm not the best person to ask this as I don't play VNs often.

I always feel bad with games like these, I feel compelled to apologize to this fictional woman for actively choosing the bad options so that I could see her not have fun for that one last ending...

One Night, Hot Springs (or "one night, hot springs") is a game I stumbled across just yesterday, and was immediately interested in. I looked it up, found it on Steam for [[wow]] zero dollars! and added it to my library to install later that night to play through it once I woke up the next day. Given my recent discoveries over the past several months, I've found it all the more valuable to read and understand more transgender stories, to take in other experiences, even if they might be written from different countries and/or cultures.

With such a difficult and personal topic as this, there comes a lot of discomfort. It's hard to place yourself anywhere, to know where you belong, or if you will at all. It's hard to introduce yourself to people without overthinking things, you're never sure if they'll accept or understand what you mean, and it's just as hard to try and explain everything in a way that won't dwell on more bad feelings. It's hard to give honest answers to even the closest people you know, because all in all, the whole process dwells on uncertainty. These things take time to get used to, and discovering yourself is never easy. Interestingly, I think that's about the most I could resonate with this game. The discomfort and inability to speak wholeheartedly.

It's painful sometimes. It takes a lot to go out of your comfort zone, and it can take a lot out of someone when things go wrong. It's understandable that, to some, the easy way out would be to simply avoid those scenarios altogether, prevent them from happening. Sometimes it feels easier to keep some things to yourself, rather than suffer the potential consequences of "burdening" someone else with your struggles and memories. Lord knows I've done the same for long enough, and still do so more often that I'd like to admit. But that won't get anyone anywhere. Nothing comes from airing your speech into the void for no one but yourself, or repressing them to maintain an atmosphere. The good part comes from finally letting it out, and finding the right ones that are willing to stick by you after the fact.

I can't say I relate to everything of this story. I had my realizations after I had already graduated and cut off everyone I knew I would be uncomfortable staying around. Naturally, there also comes the cultural differences between school uniforms, school structures in general, and uh... hot springs. But what's there is there, and I always appreciate knowing that there is common ground between folk. I can understand and feel the difficulties of introducing myself or being introduced to new faces, no matter their pre-existing relationships with those I already know. I can understand and feel the doubt and guilt that might stem from expressing trouble or discontent. I can understand and feel the discomfort from having to conform for society or legality's sake. No matter how short ONHS might have been, I will always appreciate a space to see and resonate with another's life.

Find your friends, and hold them close. Find yourself, and hold that even closer. With time, things will get better. Comfortability comes from experimentation, not being afraid to try and grow, and I think a powerful step in that direction is valuing and taking the experiences of those like yourself to heart. Thank you.

This review goes heavily into transphobia, internal and external, and the topics that brings (rape, pedophelia, suicide, death). These are the troubles trans people like myself must go through every day, and we should be allowed to speak up about it.

🎵You find yourself lost and confused, unable to comprehend the deep pit of anxiousness in your stomach or the torrential flow of tears from your eyes🎵

Being transgender is an alienating experience. Societal expectations of gender roles lock everyone, man, woman, inbetween, or something completely different into two states of ideologies: The ultra testosterone driven stoic and dependable men who rule this world, and the serene, beautiful caretaking women who hold it together. Anyone caught out of line faces scrutiny from their peers, rejection from their needs, and at worst, persecution and execution. It is an ever encompassing dogma that everyone must abide by, cis or trans, and to those who dare step out of that oppressive norm only have themselves to advocate for them. One Night, Hot Springs is one of the few games I have played to fully delve into the mindset of someone who must do so.

Haru is the cookie cutter hyper feminine trans girl, but that is all she needs to be. She is a template for the queer player to impose onto and for the cis player to learn from. She is the default character selection character for queerness because this game is about the general experience of being transgender, something in itself is so avant garde from the cisheteronormative narrative every work has that being so basic gives her her own personal story to tell. Years of hiding who she is has made her meek out of fear of retaliation for daring to be who she is. She doesn’t want to cause fights, yet everything she does that involves her trans identity makes her feel like it will, and confronting that fear is the only way for her to break out of her shell and grow as a person.

The game is short, but the branching paths that happen are only because of how Haru chooses to take things on. If she hesitates, doubts herself, or gives in to the ever looming shadow of her country’s litigation, her mood worsens and the overall outcome of this friendly holiday ends up becoming sour and unenjoyable, making her wish that she stayed home in bed. The fact that failing 3+ choices results in the bad ending and ruining her day with Manami and Erika is considered worse than the normal ending where she just chooses to stay home out of fear of not enjoying things demonstrates this mindset perfectly. If you have no chance to fuck up, isn’t it better than doing so? That’s Haru’s entire thought process throughout this game, to not be a burden on anyone for her transness, yet the game makes it explicitly clear she is not. Only by standing up for herself in a firm yet polite manner does she end up making it through with an enjoyable experience.

It’s eerie how the game is able to encapsulate pure internalized transphobia just with the choices you are given. They may seem small and innocuous to the cis crowd playing, but to those who have gone through the trans experience they are all too real in how they are handled. Most of what harms Haru’s mood is her own flusteredness to say she is a woman, something that me and many other trans people have gotten wrong in this game, not because we do not believe we are who we are, but we often have to hide ourselves in real life, go by our assigned name and appearance and act like nothing is wrong. We have to know when we are given the chance to be ourselves and not let it slip away, we have to be the opportunists to let ourselves be open and out there to the world, even in small and comfortable ways that grow larger and larger over time. Only when Haru can show her true self to everyone can she finally enjoy a peaceful night out with her friends.

It is hard to discuss this game without the massive elephant in the room. Trans people worldwide are facing genocide. Persecution, smear campaigns, demonization, detransitioning are all demons we have to face in our part of the world, some worse than others. Where I live in the United States, we often are called pedophiles and freaks just for being who we are by the ones who want to not only silence us, but to straight up erase us. We are told to not interact with children out of fear of corrupting them to be trans themselves, we are not allowed to go into the bathrooms our genders identify us as because of fake fear of “protecting cisgendered people from being assaulted”. All of this is true in America, and yet even in a different country these still apply, and I think Haru is a perfect showcase of how these systems harm us.

Haru is a 19 year old trans woman living in Japan, a country with strict LGBTQ laws, banning same sex marriage and requiring transgender people to go through a myriad of invasive surgeries just to be who they always want to be. When the game was made in 2018, She would still be considered a minor under Japanese law, as adulthood is only reached at age 20, meaning she would still be ineligible for even attempting to become a legal woman in her own country. Just like in America, the stigma of trangender children is strong, only allowing adults to go through with it after visceral and unnecessary mutilation. Her system hates her, but these hurdles are ones she has to push through in order to even achieve happiness. She would be seen as a pervert and a cretin by everyone around her but she just wants to be herself. To go relax with her friends in a public bath without being seen as a man ready to rape another woman.

I myself have had to deal with many issues like this. While Haru had been trans since young childhood given how she said she had difficulties in school, I only came out as bigender when I was 20 years old, already a legal adult, yet not much for me has happened progress wise. I am not on HRT, I have never worn a bra nor a dress, I have only been recently starting to grow out my hair which my mother is not fond of at all, I am more or less physically at the same point I was 3 years ago. It does not help that bigender people are a minority within a minority, with the number of other bigender people I know being able to fit on one hand, and their experiences with gender are not the exact same as mine. I often feel I do not belong, feeling both masc and femme, which may make me be seen even more like a weirdo man in a dress to the public at large. At work, customers assume my natural voice is feminine and call me ma'am only to see I have not shaven in a week at the window and correct themselves. It's weird, I am bigender and this is technically not correct but it doesnt feel like being gendered in the way I want it to be. Even the bathroom, one of the trans person's biggest fears is something I am confused on how I will be able to tackle it, if I would even be allowed in either restroom once I undergo my physical transitioning. The other day I had a breakdown of my lack of progress, debating if I was even trans or just a man who wanted breasts, feeling I was detransitioning as numerous friends tried to help me snap back to a proper headspace. Internalized transphobia is fierce, and it is something that does not go away, even when you are pretty and beautiful in how you look, sometimes you don’t feel pretty and beautiful to yourself.

People online with no soul mock transgender people for their high attempted suicide rate, but often it is their shunning of us that leads to that number being so high. We face stigmatization from all corners of our lives that keep us huddled in our corner, how dare we try to break out. To be persecuted, executed, sentenced to eternal damnation in hell for going against what God wants is what they all want us to be, but we have to choose to fight it. To be queer is to be defiant. Let yourself be you and stand up for yourself. You will get knocked down, but you must always rise higher than where you stood previously. You must continue to grow into the self that you want to be, the one that society won’t have, and show that you exist and will not be treated in such a way. One day the world will learn to accept us, and I am glad that we are slowly taking back the rights we once had many centuries ago, even if through small means such as making video games, movies, novels, and other forms of fiction that depicts who we are. The queerness can be minor and retroactive, overt and positive, realistically harsh yet triumphant, or like this game, somber yet optimistic. We need to show our sistren and brethren that we are there to support them in any means necessary, and games like these are often the best way to educate others and show support to those who need it most.

Here is a link to a bunch of trans helpful websites. I hope you can use these to better help the community at large or anyone else in your personal life who may need it most. You could be the one to help them finally find peace.

And with that, I want to personally thank NPCKC for this quaint little piece which speaks volumes louder than many other works I have seen in my years. My life has been better for this experience, and it is a game I highly recommend to anyone who questions themselves or needs a bit more understanding on trans topics.

This is a pleasant surprise, a game about a transgender person's experience about society, and how going out of your comfort zone can led to new experiences. While I can't say that it's a define experience for transgender people to open up, and the world to just be kind, at the least One Night, Hot Springs puts a positive spin to attempting to grow out of your comfort zone despite previous hardship.

Sadly, it's only real downfall is perhaps being too positive and short while trying to explain some rather complex feelings in a small amount of time. Despite this though, one night, hot springs still manages to juggle all it's characters well and give rather unique dialogue and experiences with each new choice you make. The fact that I wanted to see all the endings immediately, and experience more of the world is a testament to how good this game is, but it's sadly still too brief to satisfy me.

One Night, Hot Springs is a wonderfully heartfelt VN centering around a trans woman named Haru. Haru is invited to go on a trip to the hot springs with her childhood best friend, Manami, and Manami’s other close friend, Erika. While there, she must navigate her anxieties about being publicly trans, as well as her relationships with the two other girls - one old friend, and one new.
As a fellow trans person, I really appreciated ONHS’ story. It’s an authentic look at many issues we face, whether that’s discrimination, ignorance, or the fear and self-doubt we feel internally. It addresses all of these topics in a thoughtful, kind, and informative manner, while still maintaining its integrity as an enjoyable and positive story.
There were parts of this game that even I found educational. I particularly learned a lot from the conversation addressing Japanese anti-trans laws. Staying aware of these kinds of things is undoubtedly important, so that we can support our community worldwide.
ONHS’ narrative is not built on trans suffering, though; it’s instead a celebration of transness, and the little victories we achieve in everyday life. It’s about friends, facing new experiences, and relying on others for support. It’s about finding some kindness in the world even when you don’t think there is any.
A big part of what makes this such a good story, aside from the wonderful themes, are the characters themselves. Haru is an instantly relatable protagonist for many, given her anxiety, self-doubt, and introversion. Meanwhile, Manami directly counteracts her with a lovable, outgoing personality; she’s so positive that it seems like nothing bad ever happens around her. Lastly, there’s Erika, an ex-delinquent who may seem a bit abrasive at first, but turns out to be a huge sweetheart herself.
All three girls are individually likable - but they’re even better together! Their diverse personalities lead to a lot of fun and interesting interactions. The dialogue is so cute and overflowing with chemistry. All of their relationships feel genuine and unique; I particularly enjoyed watching Haru and Erika grow closer over the course of the trip.
To understand the full scope of ONHS’ story, and these characters’ relationships, you’ll need to replay it a few times. There are a total of seven different endings - a good, a bad, a normal, two dedicated to Manami, and two dedicated to Erika. The latter four are undoubtedly more fulfilling, and their specific choice paths reveal intricacies between the girls you wouldn’t otherwise see.
On the other hand, the former three are much more forgettable. I’d go so far as to say that they’re only necessary from a gameplay standpoint, to fill out branching paths that don’t particularly involve either friend. It does make sense to have a bad ending of some sort, but honestly I found the “good” ending to be far inferior to any of Erika or Manami’s. The girls’ relationships just feel too integral to the narrative to not be part of the conclusion.
This is my single issue with the way ONHS handles its VN format. Thankfully, these weak points are the minority; the rest of the endings stay consistently great. And another big reason for that is how it handles its choices.
Since VN ‘gameplay’ centers around choices and watching them play out until the end, it's particularly important that they have a noticeable impact on the story and characters. In other words, the player needs to feel like their input matters, whether it’s in big or small ways. ONHS accomplishes this tremendously. The branching paths offer amazing variety, especially for being such a short and simple game. There are a surprising number of significant decisions to make in its 20-minute span; and even the less important ones offer small changes, usually in dialogue.
Another element of ONHS that I really enjoy is its visual style. Although it’s fairly plain at first glance, it’s also very charming; everything is very rounded and simplified, making for a nice, inviting aesthetic. It kind of reminds me of Sanrio.
The character designs are particularly lovely and memorable. In fact, Haru’s warm appearance was why I initially became interested in the game. Look her up on Google and tell me that’s not a girl you’d want to be friends with!
My only complaint with the art lies in some of the environments. Although they generally use their simplicity well, there are a few weak points where they lean into it a bit too much. It can leave a scene feeling bare, or even a bit ugly. Still, this is only an issue in a few instances; I otherwise really love the execution.
Just like the art and characters, the soundtrack is a real gem as well. It’s full of calming piano, with some soft electronics thrown in - and it’s all original work by the creator! There’s not very many tracks, since the game is so short, but the few we have are really great.
Really, ONHS’ length is the only other complaint I have about it, and that’s only because I loved it so much. There are small snippets of worldbuilding for the characters here and there, but I’d love to see more of their individual AND interpersonal histories… well, you can imagine how excited I was when I found out about A Year of Springs! It’s high on my wishlist now.
When I picked it up, I knew that One Night, Hot Springs was said to be good, but it honestly surprised me how much I ended up loving it. This is a VN that I think can be enjoyed by everyone. It’s a trans-centered narrative that is not only digestible, but I think even relatable, for all kinds of people, because the writing and characters are just so great. I truly can’t wait to get around to A Year of Springs.

Visuals: 4/5
Sound: 4/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Story: 5/5
Worldbuilding: 4/5
Overall game score: 4/5 [4.2/5]