Mineko and her father have just moved into a new, rather run-down home in a small town at the base of Mt. Fugu. But all is not well. The once-bustling town is now floundering, particularly its iconic Night Market. Mysterious black-suited Agents have kidnapped the town’s cats, and nobody quite knows why. Worst of all, Nikko, the mysterious giant cat who once granted peace and prosperity to the village, has disappeared completely. Not to mention the house needs repairs, the museums need stock, everyone in town has some sort of errand they need Mineko to perform… what’s a girl to do but pet a few cats, pick a few flowers and get to work?
Humble Games’ Mineko’s Night Market is a cozy management and life simulator was announced several years ago before suffering multiple unfortunate delays. Does Mineko’s Night Market live up to its practically astronomical hype? Well… yes and no.
Mineko’s Night Market is visually stunning, with adorable graphics inspired by traditional Japanese art. The color palette is relaxing, the characters are pleasant to look at, and each and every cat is a perfectly pettable ball of fur. It’s a beautiful world, filled with cute details like lovingly rendered flowers and quirky snacks and meals you can buy at the Night Market and elsewhere. Not to mention the incorporation of Boximals, adorable toys that are shaped like, well, boxes! One of my absolute favorite things about Mineko’s Night Market is the many different outfits Mineko can wear. She is super cute in every single one of them!
Although I already briefly mentioned the cats, I really do need to bring them up again. The cats are the absolute best thing about Mineko’s Night Market, and their presence prompted me to keep playing several times when other elements bored or frustrated me. Opening up new areas to gather resources in requires rescuing cats from the mysterious Agents, and, once the cats are free, you can pet them as much as you want while they make precious little purring noises. Nikko, being a particularly large supernaturally powered cat, is all of that, but even better. Far and away my favorite character!
Unfortunately, the positive elements of Mineko’s Night Market are not enough to outweigh the negative. At their heart, cozy games are essentially about completing a series of repetitive tasks. A good cozy game needs to make these tasks, the story behind them, or the characters you are completing them for compelling enough to keep you going through day after day, season after season, cycle after cycle. And Mineko’s Night Market… doesn’t do that. The game’s world is, at its heart, not deep enough to let you forget that you are grinding through a repetitive cycle of weeks and months and years of essentially doing the same thing again and again.
I think a part of the problem is that there is very little to break up said cycle. Early in the game, you can unlock new areas, where Mineko (and sometimes her friend Bobo) will then have to free captured cats from the Agents patrolling the area. These sections feature a mixture of stealth and decision-based gameplay, and are genuinely fun. However, once you’ve opened up the various areas, everything is pretty same-y, broken up only by the weekly Night Market. The Night Market itself is pretty great, especially as more and more stalls open up, but each week leading up to it just feels so long and boring.
Another thing that doesn’t help is that almost every sort of resource-gathering or crafting introduces a different mechanic or mini-game. Aside from flowers, which can be picked up normally, everything has some special method needed to harvest or make it. Fishing and woodcutting are timing-based, while folding origami requires pushing directional buttons in the right order. This makes harvesting and crafting take a really long time, as needing to do this each and every time definitely adds up. With how limited Mineko’s stamina is, especially early in the game, the return on your investment (how many resources you actually get vs how much effort you need to put in) is frustratingly low.
The pacing of Mineko’s Night Market is also pretty bad. Early on, you need to spend weeks and weeks grinding to earn enough money to buy a tool to unlock a new area or fulfill the next house repair request from Mineko’s dad. The amount of money needed in the early game is prohibitively high, necessitating weeks of grinding, but then, once you have all the tools you need, money becomes a lot less important and the slow grind instead switches to finding the exact specific items each villager wants and upgrading the Night Market. It always feels either too fast or too slow, never quite balanced.
Mineko’s Night Market is also not helped by the fact that its characters are some of the flattest I have encountered in a game of this genre. Aside from Mineko’s father, her best friend Bobo, and her rival Miyako (and, of course, Nikko!) most characters have only a handful of dialogue lines, most of which are them asking Mineko to bring them various items. They don’t have any depth, and even when Mineko maxes out her friendship with them, she barely learns anything about them. One character likes boy bands. Another one likes bugs. Another is crotchety. They all just feel so painfully one-dimensional, and it’s hard to care about building relationships with them.
Speaking of characters, Mineko’s dad is absolutely terrible and I really could not stand him. He constantly insults Mineko about the size of her head and calls her terrible nicknames like “melonhead” and “conehead.” At one point, the entire town becomes convinced that Mineko’s name is “Wormburger” because her dad calls her that so much. Like, that’s just rude! He’s also extremely lazy and makes Mineko do most of the house repairs and earn money at the Night Market while he sits around and watches TV. So few characters have more than a line or two, and it’s an absolute waste that one of them is this miserable guy. I truly dreaded every time I had to talk to Mineko’s dad because of how rude he was to his own daughter!
Cozy games have become a rather over-saturated genre as of late, and it makes it harder and harder for games of this type to stand out. Unfortunately, I do not think that Mineko’s Night Market will ultimately be one that does. It boasts an amazing art style and some adorable cats, but is held back by flat characters, grind-heavy gameplay, and frequently frustrating mechanics. The game has a lot of potential, and I’m very disappointed to say that I feel it did not live up to what was promised.
Kate played Mineko’s Night Market on PC via Steam using a provided review code.
This really feels like, to me, that this reviewer only played a little bit of the game, and doesn’t give it’s story or characters a fair shake.
also, i did not find the grind to get tools to be weeks and weeks, i had all tools and locations by end of summer