Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2678990/Minami_Lane/
Price: $3.99 USD
Blurb: “Welcome to Minami Lane! Build your own street in this tiny cozy, casual management sim! Unlock and customize buildings, manage your shops, and maximize the happiness of your villagers to complete quests and fill your street with love! Minami Lane is a tiny street management game made in less than 6 months and priced at $4.99. Every day, you can place or upgrade buildings and manage your shop to try to get the perfect offer. Then the day goes by, with villagers who come and tell you how they feel about your street, trash to pick up, cats to pet, and tanuki hiding as common items to find. The game is composed of 5 missions with simple objectives and no fail states that take between 2 and 4 hours to complete. There is also a sandbox mode for you to build the street of your dreams. To compare it to other games: it’s shorter and simpler than traditional management or city builder games, even Kairosoft ones. It’s cozier and a bit more puzzle oriented than idle games such as Boba simulator but with less content too.“
This is a two man game by a guy and his girlfriend. (I’m not counting the “friend” who made the music as it got on my nerves really quickly.)
Blibloop - https://blibloop.carrd.co/ Doot - https://linktr.ee/dodoot Zakku - https://bento.me/zakku
This title hit me and I didn’t even get the number plate! It is a very casual game, where you get to manage a street. I put it on, and played a bit, got tired of the music, played something else in the background, and before I knew it, it was dark! I was so relaxed I got up and washed the few cups I had and the floor too. I packed out the wine racks and wiped down all my bottles. That’s how relaxed I was… Though there is a method to the madness, for my first play, I did not do any of it, I built shops and parks and tweaked recipes, picked up litter, and stroked the cat. (I totally missed the fact that you needed to high-five the cyclist.)
Since I’m skipping the music, let’s quickly talk about the graphics (the sound design is great though!). You can place houses, where you can define the roof type and the colors. I would have liked to see a bit more variety here, and maybe a few more color options. What they have is not bad in any way, so don’t read anything negative into the statement. I just think this game could have launched above the clouds if it did. The same can be said about the upgrades. You get a choice between “stars” and beautification. Obviously you need “stars” to get going or you will not have any income, as more “stars” mean more customers – that equate to more money, so you can buy the next house, for instance. So, it would have been nice if you had a choice when it upgrades, I will elaborate later. The characters are cute, well drawn little cherubs, walking up and down your street. They all also have the same color palette as the street (there are no sharp colors).
Gameplay:
The game is a Sim, but there are some other things, like picking up trash, petting the cat, greeting the cyclist, clicking on lost items, and hearing what the people who frequent your street have to say. I really liked the fact that you could break that fourth wall and pet the cat, and I wished the game leaned a bit more heavily in this direction. For example, feed the ducks or put up birdhouses or whatever. I did find that the people in the street would complain about something, like say, they want more noodles in their ramen. I would oblige, but the next day they would complain there’s too much noodles in the ramen; it is like asking my girlfriend what she would like for supper, there is no definitive answer. I liked the dynamic of the young and the old people, where the young ones would be more satisfied if the Kon-bini had soda and corn dogs, as opposed to the old people who liked instant noodles and rice balls.
Now, about that statement earlier, you can make a building more popular or more beautiful. For instance, if you choose more stars, your ramen shop gets a huge sign (a bowl). You have no control over this sign. If you choose beautification, the ramen shop gets paper lanterns and you also have no say, which means that, after a while, things feel a bit cookie-cutter-like. This, other than the music, is my only criticism of the game. It would have been cool if there were synergies too, say putting a few parks together, turn them into something else, but it is a nice to have, not a must. The main gameplay loop is solid, it is fun and I think I only sped up the time on the first day. The element of where’s Waldo, every day, did not get old as, one day, it is a lost cellphone in the street, the next it is a lost violin, sticking out behind the stairs.
It also looked like your cherubs get old, as I started with ten fresh ones and soon I had nine freshers and one popcorn topper. The dynamic changed to six and four soon, but I did not follow this as I was trying out different things. Speaking of your little cherubs, when you click on them they have some comment on what happened to them, this bubble goes away too quickly sometimes, and I had to click one dude/dudette twice to read what they liked or did not like and missed another one slipping into a house. As it is a casual game, this does not matter and I did not stress about it, but I can see someone with OCD struggling to keep up trying to click on every little cherub. Though the street signs did appear to repeat a lot, it does not really matter when you are zoomed in. The zooming in and out is flawless, even on Ubuntu, making the overall experience even better.
I picked the game up on sale, and for the price, there are no complaints. To the developers, I would gladly cough up that money again if they could add some DLC (I never thought I’d say that, but the game was so cheap, one could spring for DLC, unlike Paradox games!) with a bigger variety of cherubs, and tasks, and buildings, and maybe a touch-up on the art. I am not saying the art is bad, I mean things like the cafe has a pavement on the pavement. It messes with my eye a bit. It could be cool if there was a night cycle too, with cosy lights, etc. Even take it up a notch, with delivery services, and being able to customize the other side of the road too, with different hedges, etc. For everyone reading this and going hmmm… Yes, all I see are cool possibilities here.
Your little street goes from one house to feeling lived in – in no time. Speaking of time, it would be awesome if the background changed from sunrise to sunset. What I liked was that my first frustration with the game I could sort out with a few clicks. You see, by default, the camera will follow a cherub, when you click on them. You can turn this off, or choose one of the other options. There are missions you can play too; I did not, as I had no idea what bubble tea was, so I played in planning mode. The game saves every “evening”, so if you made a boo-boo, you can quit and it will revert to the last save.
I played on 4K resolution to test, as well, and I am happy to report that you can choose a large cursor, so it does not get lost on screen. There is a bit of lag on slower systems, just because it is Unity, but your average computer from the last five years should be able to run this.
Is it worth the asking price? Yes, I had fun without realizing it. :)