Safety · History
The real tunnels are sealed. Here's how the game lets you in safely
The whole game is built on a tunnel nobody is allowed into. That's on purpose, and it's the one rule I will never bend.
What's really down there
FACT Under Central Avenue there's a stone arch, finished in 1884, that carries Hot Springs Creek under the street. It's a stormwater tunnel. It floods in big storms, it's dark, and it's maintained by the city. Going inside without permission is against the law, and there are no public tours.
LEGEND Everything else, the gangster passages, the bowling alley, the secret doors from hotel basements, is legend. Fun legend, but legend.
So the game opens a pretend one
FICTION In Hidden Springs, every downtown shop is a sealed door. You open it on your phone, at the shop's counter, by touching the white card. Behind it is a tunnel room I built: a 1930s scene you can look around in 3D, a piece of the story, a puzzle and a lock. You get the adventure of going underground without leaving the sales floor.
The rules I wrote into the game
- Every door opens at a shop counter. The game never sends anyone to a real door, grate, manhole, basement, stairway or the creek arch.
- The game says plainly that entering the real tunnel is illegal.
- Hidden Finds, the little rewards shops hide outside, can only sit at approved spots on the public sidewalk at street level, like a lamp post, a planter or a bench. Nothing is ever physically placed.
- The free story stops on National Park land are look-from-the-public-sidewalk only. There's nothing to climb and nowhere off the path to go.
- On Bathhouse Row it's a walking game. Crossings use the signals, and no clue asks anyone to cross mid-block.
If you want to see the arch
You already have. Stand on Central in front of Bathhouse Row and you're standing on its lid. The game's Archive page on the creek arch tells its whole story, and that's as close as anybody should get.