Spa World Early Access Impressions

An early access code was provided, many thanks to Paul Driessen

Have you ever wanted to run your own spa, complete with saunas, meditation rooms, and a swimming pool? In Spa World you can do just that — building new rooms for different treatments, hiring staff, keeping everything clean, all while earning money and reputation. This simulation game is coming soon to Steam Early Access.

Building you Spa

When you start the game, you’ll play a tutorial to learn the basics. You’ll need to build a reception room to receive guests, plus a changing room and a treatment room to offer services. The treatment rooms available include a sauna (which you build during the tutorial), mud bath, meditation room, juice bar, swimming pool, yoga studio, and massage room. You also have three additional rooms: a toilet block, laundry room, and staff room.

Every room must touch a path, so as soon as you build your reception, lay down your path network and start planning where rooms will go. Your spa also needs staff. You can hire janitors to keep everything clean, receptionists to welcome guests and offer packages, plus therapists, bartenders, and a lifeguard to boost revenue in their respective rooms. You also have options to increase prices per room or upgrade rooms to better meet guest demands.

You’ll have goals to fulfill so you can advance to the next level and unlock more spas to play on, though only two are available in this Early Access build. Some basic goals include building a certain number of rooms, hiring staff members, and attending to a certain number of guests. The harder ones involve maintaining your reputation level and reaching a target account balance.

Keeping your Reputation

The reputation system determines your spa’s daily success. This is a challenging part of Spa World and directly impacts your revenue. Your reputation rises with each guest treated and when you handle random events well, but it drops if rooms are dirty, guests leave untreated, or you decline events. That sounds simple, but in practice I found it too hard and often unclear.

First, treating guests raises your reputation far less than leaving them untreated harms it. This makes meeting guest expectations and avoiding long waits a crucial part of gameplay. At the end of each day, you receive a message telling you how many clients left untreated and suggesting you add more rooms. However, it’s not clear which rooms to add, why guests left, or which room was the most crowded.

This can throw you into a downward spiral — your reputation hits rock bottom, revenue keeps falling, and recovery feels nearly impossible. To keep an eye on your reputation and master the game, I learned a few tricks. Start building one of each treatment room so all clients can find what they want. Then, watch the status tab — it shows which rooms are top performers, so you can add more or upgrade existing ones. Lastly, slightly raise prices on your rooms. That approach — plus having enough janitors to keep rooms clean — will maintain a good reputation and healthy cash flow.

One excellent addition that let me experiment and test why my spas kept failing was the cheat menu. When my reputation was at its lowest, I could give myself money to test new solutions. That went a long way toward teaching me what I needed to do — so credit to the developers for that.

Clients and Staff

Each spa has different guest types with their own treatment preferences. Reading the guest guide tab can help you focus your efforts on the rooms they’ll use most. If many clients want the swimming pool, consider building a larger one. While I feel this has less impact on gameplay than it should, it definitely helped me build the first rooms for each spa.

VIP clients appear from time to time. While this is an interesting mechanic, it’s hard to tell when a VIP is at reception — and impossible to know what they want. The worst part: if you don’t treat them, your reputation suffers greatly. If you’re doing everything right, this shouldn’t be a problem, and VIPs will be treated like everyone else. But I do miss some kind of warning when they arrive and more options to meet their expectations.

The staff you hire has perks and can have buffs — or debuffs. Janitors can be speedy, cleaning rooms faster, or thorough, keeping rooms clean longer. But they can also be lazy, taking twice as long to clean. Also, staff will eventually ask for better benefits, adding a little extra challenge to keeping revenue positive.

A Few Tweaks Needed

Beyond what I’ve mentioned, I think Spa World would greatly benefit from a more refined art style. The current visuals undersell the game, making it look like a low-effort cash grab — which it is not. This title has quite solid gameplay, and I could see the developers actively working on it during my review period. Honestly, I don’t think a huge overhaul is needed. The menus are simple and efficient, and better shading would probably work wonders. While this may be a creative choice, I truly believe the art is obscuring the game’s true potential.

Another issue: I found it very easy to overwrite previous saves — I did it several times myself. There really should be better save management, more options when saving, and definitely more save slots. Also, there’s no quit button on the main menu; you have to either close the game window or press Alt+F4.

Final Thoughts

As an Early Access game, Spa World shows a lot of potential and could appeal to players depending on the price. A few tweaks are needed before a full launch, but seeing updates arrive as I played suggests the developers are willing to give it the attention it needs and keep improving. I do feel the game is a little incomplete — a demo might have been a better approach for a release in this state — but again, price matters a lot.

Overall, Spa World has the potential to be a great simulation game and an interesting launch.

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