one night, hot springs postmortems

six years ago, i wrote a one-year postmortem for one night, hot springs, which i released seven years ago. time flies!

i also wrote a look-back post at four years, so three years ago now, just a few months after releasing A YEAR OF SPRINGS.

i've been wanting to move some of my devlogs over to my own site to have them in one place, so i figured this is a good time to do it. it's also a good chance for me to think about how i feel about things now, so i'll add comments to my post.

without further ado then, some old posts & a new post...

one night, hot springs: 1-year postmortem

hi, it's been one year since i released one night, hot springs.

i was actually so afraid to release this game that one year ago that when i published this game on itch.io, i turned off my phone because i didn't want to see what people were saying. this game was really hard for me to make and i was scared that everyone wouldn't see haru, manami and erika the way they deserved to be.

overall though, everyone has been kind and the response has been overwhelming. i really appreciate everyone who has played, everyone who has streamed, everyone who has posted reviews, everyone who has commented publicly, everyone who has sent me private messages sharing their own personal experiences - it has been really interesting seeing how everyone relates to the game, and it means a lot to me that so many people can relate to haru.

i hope that you all have friends like haru does that support you and that the world is a kinder place to you tomorrow than it is today.

thank you for playing one night, hot springs!

happy 4th anniversary & thank you + newsletter

hello. today is february 27th of 2022, which marks four years since i first released one night, hot springs here on itch.io. thank you to everyone who has played it up until now.

since then, i have made two sequels to this game & combined it into a remastered trilogy, A YEAR OF SPRINGS, which has been released not only on itch.io but also steam, google play & consoles.

i've made a lot of different things in this time too. if you'd like to keep up with what i'm making, i've started a newsletter which you can check out here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/npckc (don't miss the special wallpaper available from the first issue! 👀)

back in 2018 i was still really new to game dev so there are a lot of things in one night, hot springs that i would design differently if i were to do it now (some of which is stuff that made putting A YEAR OF SPRINGS together difficult!), but it's still a very important game to me.

i originally made one night, hot springs because of a news article i read that made me feel really uncomfortable. i will not get too specific, but it was about how somebody had the police called on them because somebody else thought they were in the wrong gendered area at a hot springs. it wasn't so much the article that made me uncomfortable but the general reaction to it online. i made one night, hot springs to organise my feelings on what happened as well as create a game where things would happen the way i felt like they should. i wanted to make a game about a trans woman who went to the hot springs and had a nice evening with her friends. that was it. nothing else.

i never planned on making a sequel (or two sequels), but last day of spring, once again, came about because of something i saw in the news. in the beginning of the year that i made last day of spring, japan's supreme court upheld that surgery was legally required for transgender people to change your legal gender in japan. the very same year though was the start of a new era in japan - reiwa - and there was talk of how reiwa would change things. the thing was, if things were changing, they weren't changing in a way that would make the lives of minorities living in japan better - at least, it didn't feel that way to me. i felt bitter & angry & just generally defeated... and that's how last day of spring came to be, with erika, the protagonist, finding out about the hurdles minorities have to face not just with governmental laws but just in living in daily life in society.

the third and final game, spring leaves no flowers, came about much more lightly... since the game was always about three women from the beginning, i wanted to round off the story by telling the last game from the final character's perspective. manami has always been a bit on the sidelines, which is important - because her identity, which the game gets into more, is also one that is often sidelined, because it's harder for people to notice & often isn't talked about. in the other games, manami was always the one supporting her friends - so i wanted to make a final game where her friends are the one who support her.

these are the three games that make up A YEAR OF SPRINGS. i don't currently have any plans on making any more games with these characters - i think their story has been told. A YEAR OF SPRINGS has an epilogue that shows a little bit of what comes after the three games, so if you're interested, check it out!

while i don't plan on updating this version of the game any more in the future, you can play A YEAR OF SPRINGS to enjoy one night, hot springs the way i intend it to be - with remastered art/music, better designed menus, & sound captions throughout the whole game.

back in the present...

it's 2025. one night, hot springs has been downloaded ~1.3 million times over the different platforms it's on, & that's honestly a bit terrifying to me. it's scary to think that something i wrote has been seen by so many people.

it's something i wrote originally without putting very much thought into it - just a story i created because i felt unhappy about something & wanted an outlet for these feelings. i personally am privileged in that japan is a country i actively chose to move to, so i think at the time it was simpler for me to write the story without thinking about any potential repercussions. on a broader level, if something came up in japan that i absolutely just could not accept, the option of leaving, though still difficult, would have been easier for me than it would be for most people who've lived their whole lives here.

i often feel like when i talk about one night, hot springs & A YEAR OF SPRINGS, i have to give disclaimers like these to make it clear that i'm just one person who made a game for fun - i'm not a figurehead or a set of ideas. i just make the games that i want to. that's all. but people seem to extrapolate what kind of person they think i should be based on the games that i make & then get disappointed when i'm not the person they made up in their heads - because of course i'm not. i'm a real human being.

at the same time though, i really do feel honoured that the little story i wrote has resonated with so many people, even though the unexpected pressure that came with it can be a bit suffocating. like i said in the one-year postmortem, most people have been kind, even though the response has been overwhelming. if i could go back in time seven years ago to talk to my past self, i would still tell them to make the game.

if playing my games has made people feel happier, more connected with others, &c... i think that's only a good thing. i hope more people will continue to play them, even if at the same time i find that thought kind of scary.

so, i guess to wrap things off, thank you. for playing my games. for leaving comments. for sharing them with your friends.

thank you for seven years of one night, hot springs ♨️