Drinking in the hot spring!
Steam
Hummingway
2025
Drinking in the hot spring! (yes, with the lack of capitalization) is a one-sitting one-ending visual novel available on Steam. It's about a group of presumably naked women (calm down) who hang out in an outdoor Japanese hot spring, drinking various alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages, while discussing their individual dilemmas. One girl is the leader of the group; she's sitting across from everyone else so she has a distinct pop-up sprite appear when she speaks. There's no voice acting but there are word bubbles positioned under characters as they speak, which is extremely helpful. As with certain other compact VNs (Chase: Cold Case Investigations - Distant Memories comes to mind for those who want a very specific example), there's basically zero internal monologuing or narration here. The Steam description itself refers to this as a "conversation-driven visual novel."
Surprisingly, there are binary choices to be made by the player now and again. The choices do nothing besides altering tiny bits of dialogue (as stated, there's one ending) and most choices are between two incredibly similar things so it all feels extra useless. The game does a good job differentiating each character, somewhat surprising given the short runtime, but the writing itself can be pretty bland. Not the greatest translation either. Visuals are sufficient enough, as are the character sprites. Boob anatomy is a little weird though (I won't elaborate). Music sounds like royalty-free stock slop. Basically a cutesy time-killer with ambiguously nude women. Nothing more, nothing less.
(Strange and hilarious to see Steam games now slapped with all these little "warnings" -- "Additionally, please take appropriate precautions if you choose to enjoy alcohol in a hot spring in real life." -- Really??)
Rating: 2/5
Reviewed: 04/10/26