What happens when a game-breaking bug turns out to be a tougher fix than initially thought? If you’re Chilla’s Art, you delist the game on Steam and release a remake a year and a half later. The Bathhouse: Restored Edition has been rebuilt from the ground up, and now it’s time to clock back in. It’s time to find out if the supernatural can top the horrors of working in customer service.
The Bathhouse: Restored Edition (PC [Reviewed])
Developer: Chilla’s Art
Publisher: Chilla’s Art
Released: August 9, 2024
MSRP: $7.99
You step into the shoes of Maina, a 23-year-old woman who’s traded living in the city for running a bathhouse in the countryside. She’s compelled for reasons unknown to her and takes up the position through an internal transfer that secures her an apartment as part of her employment. All in all, it sounds like a pretty good deal and is one of those things that’s totally doable in your early 20s.
Upon her arrival to the perpetually stormy street that hosts her new abode and workplace, we’re introduced to the Landlord. He’s an uber-creep whose face looks like it was modeled on an impression of tree bark on Silly Putty. Aside from owning the apartment building Maina is staying at, he runs the bathhouse where she’ll be working. It’s a thinly veiled power dynamic that carries through the rest of the game, with nothing being done to subvert expectations.
The Bathhouse is about as subtle as a blunderbuss in every other aspect of its narrative. Customers are downright hostile for no reason, there’s absolutely a spirit haunting the establishment, and Maina is objectified and harassed with zero recourse. All of this ties in with the gameplay mechanics to drive home the point: Maina’s voice and desires don’t matter and she’s simply there as a “thing” to be used by the NPCs and story.
The foundation for the story, Maina’s coming to this village, and the larger narrative are great concepts. However, nothing is built upon that foundation, leaving it to feel lacking. The Bathhouse clocks in at around three and a half hours to complete, which is plenty of time to tell a compelling story. Instead, our time is spent on throwaway NPCs and banal scares.
I can appreciate what Chilla’s Art was trying to do here, as the concept itself is brilliant. I’m an absolute sucker for sims like House Flipper and PowerWash Simulator. Throw in a healthy dose of spookiness and you’d have to actively try to make me dislike it. So, you can imagine my disappointment when The Bathhouse managed to be subpar in both respects.
The simulator aspect has more meat on it than the horror side, which isn’t saying much because running the bathhouse is about as fulfilling as the infamous bread meal shared by Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Customers come in, you take their money, give them their requested goods, and then monitor them like a hawk while maintaining the temperature of the baths.
It’s this constant running around that eliminates any sense of dread or fear. Sure, there’s spooky stuff happening and the occasional attempted jump scare, but I’m too busy keeping sexual deviants out and fighting with the fickle water heaters to care. The setting is fantastic, but the story and atmosphere are never allowed enough time to breathe and do their work.
It’s hard to say that simply adding features will make it better, as that sounds dismissive of the effort that went into creating this artwork. It seems that Chilla’s Art was so laser-focused on the core idea, that it forgot to add the details and flourish that other titles in both spaces employ to make them so engaging.
Even if the pacing was adjusted, the character models and animations are so bizarre (not in the good way) as to nullify any sense of horror. Faces and features are distorted enough to enter the uncanny valley, but never make it to the other side of artistic intent. Walking animations are stilted and some characters, who totally aren’t ghosts, simply disappear.
These flaws are only exacerbated by the litany of bugs on display. Playing in full-screen mode isn’t an option thanks to the borders being cut off. Motion blur can’t be disabled (which is an unforgivable sin), overall performance isn’t consistent with bouts of stuttering, and a few game-breaking bugs are present when trying to get specific endings.
The Bathhouse is a victim of under-delivery. It feels as though it’s scared to step out of line and ultimately fails to succeed as either a sim or horror game. Had Chilla’s Art really leaned into it and incorporated the horror elements as part of the sim, it could have been amazing. There was real potential to mess with the player’s head in a Hideo Kojima fashion that was squandered on a subpar story focused on violence against women.
Chilla’s Art has a long history of making games in this style and has built up a cult following. The developer’s games are bite-sized adventures into a digital world of pulp horror. While they fill that role of inexpensive uncut gems that delight a few, I would love to see a few more passes on a title and have it really shine. As it stands, even this “restored edition” feels like a first draft rather than a finished product.
Published: Aug 26, 2024 10:36 am