Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs: The Thrilling Steamy Maze Kiwami review

A lukewarm trip to a ghostly onsen

Tadahiro Miura’s Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs is built around a playful premise. Serialized across 24 volumes, the manga tells the story of “hands-on psychic” Kogarashi Fuyuzora who beats and banishes yōkai with his bare fists. But the life of a traveling exorcist doesn’t pay particularly well, forcing Kogarashi to work out a deal at a dilapidated onsen to find a place to live.

The upside is that he can stay as long as he wants for a thousand yen a month. The other upside is that the host springs in inhabited by a throng of women, with lead Yuuna Yunohana being a yukata-clad spirit that’s bound to the inn. Like most harems, many of the gals have feelings for Kogarashi, leading to a succession of comedic and suggestive situations- often in the hot springs. Narratively, there’s no downside unless you have an aversion to fan service.

Know your ninja, cat-girl, and inebriated oni!

Given the sheer number of buxom beauties in Haunted Hot Springs, the most obvious type of adaptation would be to turn the romp into eroge visual novel. And while The Thrilling Steamy Maze Kiwami provides plenty of dialog, the title also imagines the cast inside a Mystery Dungeon clone. More silly than sexy, it follows Chunsoft’s formula quite closely. Between crawls through randomized dungeons, you’ll engage with some menu-driven fiddling to glean a statistical advantage. And while you get a convert weapons and armor into silly things, it’s hard to know how much benefit a Santa suit brings until you test it out in combat.

Fundamentally, The Thrilling Steamy Maze Kiwami expects players to be familiar with the source material. Within minutes of starting the game, you’ll be thrust into visual novel-style dialog that brings out most of the manga’s cast. While astute players might be able to distinguish personalities from the game’s dialog, Steamy Maze doesn’t provide much backstory. Instead, it imagines Kogarashi sucked into a model garden that holds mysterious properties, like talking crystals that act as guides.

Some Cleavage in the Corridor Crawl

Missions habitually send Yuuna and an ally of her choice into labyrinths filled with enemies, items, and traps in their effort to rescue Kogarashi. Following roguelike formula, success entails augmenting your party’s weapons and armor and equipping any newfound amulets and talismans that provide additional abilities. The latter two are crucial when The Thrilling Steam Maze decides to lock you inside of a room with multiple foes. Here, Yuuna might be able to scatter enemies across the current floor of the dungeon, which might save your life if your character is plagued by curses. Fortunately, locating a foot spring inside a dungeon can remove any jinxes that might cause you to repeatedly miss when attacking.

Inevitably, Yuuna will falter. She might find herself surrounded by enemies, unable to rid herself of a curse, or experience some combination of these kinds of calamities. When this happens, you’ll lose all your held possessions, including any enhanced weapons or armor that’s equipped. The Thrilling Steamy Maze gives you a shot at reclaiming your things. But you’ll have to make your way down to the level where you were killed. That can be tough when your loadout has been seized and your low on currency.

The Benefits of Leftover Bathwater

Yes, Steamy Maze can regularly frustrate with death happening unexpectedly. And since both Yuuna and her selected adventuring comparison have the experience level reset every time they enter a dungeon, you can’t just grind and grow stronger. To counter this, this updated release (the game was originally a Japan-only PlayStation 4 title) includes some optional DLC weapons that ensure you don’t get caught in an impasse.

Although the dialog and action are both pretty tame, the game’s hot springs mini-game might invigorate some players. Recalling the ‘don’t get caught playing public’ mischief of Criminal Girls, The Thrilling Steam Maze has you protecting the gals’ bodies from waves of invaders as they bathe. Essentially, you’re moving a tanuki with sunglasses around, hitting foes with your tail, which feels like playing a Flash game the early 2000s. But as with the case of today’s streamers, leftover bathwater proves useful as it can enhance your weapons and armor. Try explaining that to the person next to you on the train.

Conclusion

Playing The Thrilling Steamy Maze is an adequate experience when using a mouse and keyboard on a laptop or desktop. However, a several issues are evident when playing on portable PCs like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally. When using a controller, you can make it through a stage- but expect every single on-screen button prompt to be incorrect. The game has unusual key bindings (such as “tab” to skip dialog) so expect to have to create a custom control scheme or at least download a community one. And since you cannot adjust the game’s display resolution, you’ll see some unsightly edges on the game’s character portraits.

Sure, there’s scant sexiness found in most Mystery Dungeon games. And despite some vapor clouds getting in the way of your onsen ogling, a bit of skin is Thrilling Steamy Maze Kiwami lone distinction. If you are really interested in overhead, turn-based roguelikes, any of the Shiren the Wanderer are a better bet given their superior gameplay.

Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs: The Thrilling Steamy Maze
Kiwami was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.