Visitors
Visiting for the weekend? Here's a free Saturday downtown
If you're in Hot Springs for a weekend, you're going to walk Central Avenue anyway. Hidden Springs gives that walk a story, and a reason to step inside the shops instead of just past them.
The plan for a Saturday
- Park once. The city's Exchange Street Parking Deck is one block west of Bathhouse Row and costs less per hour than the meters on Central (the city's parking page has the current rates).
- Open Chapter 1 on your phone and pick the 30-minute walk or the whole hour.
- Follow the clues along the shop side of Central, across from the bathhouses.
- Have lunch in the middle. A couple of the story's stops are breakfast and lunch places.
- Do Chapter 2 after lunch, or save it for the car ride home, from your phone.
How long it really takes
About 30 minutes for a short walk of 4 shops, and about an hour for all 8 in a chapter, plus however long you browse. Ten chapters are written, so it can fill a whole weekend if you want it to. Each one is its own little case with an ending.
The park is part of the story, never an ad
Bathhouse Row, the Grand Promenade and the fountains are Hot Springs National Park. In the game they're free story stops: you look at something from the public sidewalk and answer a question about it. There are no cards, signs or codes on park land, and nothing on park land is for sale through the game.
What it costs you
Nothing. Players never pay. Shops pay for their doors, and the reward a shop picks is the same for every player who opens it. There's no drawing and no luck involved.
Honest note
Hidden Springs is in preview right now. The story is finished through Chapter 5, but shops are still signing up, so the white cards aren't on counters yet and rewards show "coming soon". You can still play every door from your phone. The public launch is planned for March 17, 2027.