Maltese's Fluffy Onsen

Introduction

Maltese's Fluffy Onsen sits quietly at the bottom of the screen, a small hot-spring bathhouse where cats, dogs, rabbits, capybaras and more wander in to soak in a bath, grab a snack, and wander back out again. Developed by Sinkhole Studio and published with Paleo and XD, it released 14 May 2025 — under the working title Animal Spa before a rename that shows up as its own minor controversy in the review sample below — to an outstanding reception. Its all-language score sits at 94.5% across 3,052 reviews, and its English-language sample specifically is even stronger: 97.9% across 567 reviews, with just 12 negatives to its name, all of which this review reads in full. Checking the language split behind that badge shows a genuinely international audience — Simplified Chinese, English and Korean reviewers all represented in meaningful numbers — rather than one market carrying the whole score, which is worth confirming before trusting a figure this high.

A licensed character, and art that earns its praise

Part of this game's appeal is inherited rather than invented. Several reviewers explain that Maltese, the game's title character, originated as a webtoon dog created by a Korean artist and became popular through KakaoTalk stickers before this game existed — meaning a real slice of the audience arrived as existing fans of the character rather than discovering it cold. That inherited goodwill is matched by genuine, specific praise for the execution: the pixel art draws constant compliments, and the soundtrack gets called out by name more than once, one reviewer rating it flatly "15/10." None of that reads as marketing language recycled by reviewers — it's specific, repeated, and consistent across a very large sample.

The complaint underneath the score

Set against nearly universal acclaim, this game's small negative sample tells a focused, specific story: there just isn't that much to actually do. "It's cute and will hold your interest for maybe 15-20 minutes before you realize that there's not much more to it than what you're already doing," reads the most-upvoted English negative, with 47 votes. A second, from a 131-hour reviewer, describes all eight of the game's stages amounting to the same layout with different exterior skins: "I effectively created the same onsen nine times in a row." A third, playing in both English and Chinese in the same review to make sure the point wasn't missed, warns other buyers plainly not to purchase if gameplay depth matters to them. Steam's own achievement data offers some corroboration, in an unusual direction: with just ten achievements tracked, the single most-earned sits at only 52.5% — a notably low ceiling for this library, though one this review reads carefully rather than over-interpreting, since a genuinely passive background companion may simply not trigger achievement conditions the way a more actively played game would.

It's worth being fair to both sides here, the same way this library reads Bao Bao's Cozy Laundromat's very similar split: the game's own community tags rank "Desktop Companion" as the single most-voted descriptor, ahead of "Idler" itself. This is explicitly built to be ambient decoration rather than a deep management sim, and the overwhelming majority of its audience — including reviewers logging hundreds of hours — engages with it exactly that way and loves it. The minority complaining about thin content are, by and large, applying a different, more systems-focused yardstick to a game that was never really built to hold up under it.

The best-supported small release this lane has found

What genuinely sets Maltese's Fluffy Onsen apart from comparable small cozy-idle releases this lane has covered is the sheer consistency of its post-launch support. Where several other games in this batch went quiet within six to ten months of launch, this one's update feed runs uninterrupted from an April 2025 demo through an August 2026 "Summer Update" — more than fifteen months later. Three free animal-themed DLC packs (Bird, Frog, Horse) shipped between September 2025 and February 2026, a full anniversary update landed in May 2026, and cross-promotional bundles with other cozy titles have run regularly throughout. For reviewers specifically frustrated by thin content at launch, that steady drip of free additions is a real, ongoing answer, even if it hasn't fully resolved the complaint for everyone.

A rename that cost some goodwill, and scattered bugs

A specific, minor but genuine sore point: the game launched as Animal Spa and was renamed to Maltese's Fluffy Onsen within its first few weeks, and at least two reviewers in this small sample express real annoyance about it — one asking the developer directly to "stop changing the name of the game every 10 minutes." That's a small thing in isolation, but for buyers who wishlisted or recommended the game under its original name, it's a fair irritation to flag. Separately, a handful of technical reports are worth noting: one reviewer describes losing a floor's worth of careful decoration to an update, and another reports the game failing to respond to any input on launch on Steam Deck as of a 2026 update, despite the developer's own November 2025 patch notes describing a fix for a related black-screen issue. Neither appears frequently enough in the sample to call a systemic problem, but both are worth a new buyer's awareness.

Value and monetisation

At NZ$8.99, discounted to NZ$6.29 at the time of writing, with no in-app purchases and only two modest cosmetic and soundtrack DLC packs around NZ$4.49 each, Maltese's Fluffy Onsen is honestly priced for what it delivers — and the three free content DLCs added since launch push the value proposition further in the player's favour than most small releases this library reviews.

Final Verdict

Maltese's Fluffy Onsen earns its exceptional review score honestly: it's gorgeous, it's genuinely loved by a broad international audience, and its developer has kept adding to it for well over a year after launch, which very few games this small manage. The specific, real complaint about thin underlying systems is worth taking seriously for buyers who want more from an idle game than ambience — but for the audience this was actually built for, a beautiful, low-pressure desktop companion to run in the corner of the screen, it delivers close to exactly what it promises, and keeps delivering more of it than almost anything else in this genre this session.