#paytonscorner recs

[elitheaceofalltrades]

Minami Lane Demo Review

So Last week I finally tried rebalancing my life and made times for hobbies! Not sure how long it will last cause Feb & Mar are always terrible for my S.A.D but we move.

So I got this demo from steam nextfest last week. It was recommended to me by steam and then after I had already downloaded it, it also got recommended by both Payton and Kennedy on youtube. I thought the art was super cute and that was what originally drew me in. The premise also seemed nice to me and at first I wasn't sure if it was a game I'd buy but I knew I at least wanted to demo it. I'm so glad I did!!

The game was totally adorable and I had a lot of fun! The demo was only 2 mission while I believe the full game will be at least 5 missions and a sandbox mode.

So what's it about? Minami Lane is this absolutely adorable cosy game where you build and manage a street. You customise buildings, manage shops and try to maximise your villagers happiness. Normally I'm a bit avoidant of management games recently because I feel like a lot of them are too much. There is so much to manage, they move quickly and normally they also have a pretty large scale. Bascially, modern management games tend to make me overwhelmed. However, this reminded me of some of the like early 2010s management games that were way more chilled and laid back.

Pros

The game mechanics were easy to understand

It was fun!

The challenges were difficult enough that you had to work for them but not so difficult that you got fustrated

You can pause or speed up time

There's a clear daily review at the end of the day that summarises what you accomplished and your villagers overall thoughts and ratings which was layed out nice and easy to understand

After Mission 1, you can save the reviews your villagers have of your shops which is great at helping you keep track of what you need to change

CATS

TANUKI

The customisation options for buildings were nice

Actually the building options on a whole were cool, there was a boba shop, a bookstore and a ramen shop to name a few.

It autosaves

The art style was adorable (wow I've used that word a lot)

The music was nice

Cons

I found that sometimes the trash you had to pick up was really hard to spot. My villagers would say something was there and I'd have to pause time and zoom in to try to find it.

You can't rewind time or restart a day and a couple times I accidentally started my day before adding a building.

You can't change where a building is located and you can only add 1 space to the left at a time.

Overall I really enjoyed this game and I added it to my wishlist. I hope you give this game a try if you like cosy relaxing games. It releases this month on 28th February and it's estimated to be about 2-4 hours playtime. I don't currently know what the price will be but at that play time I can't imagine it being over US$10. The creators have also stated on the steam page that there won't be any new levels added after release which furthers my belief that this will be a cheap game.

Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

~Eli

Ace of All Trades, Pro at None😆