Minami Lane [review]
What is Minami Lane? It’s a city builder with a cute Japanese vibe that focuses on a singular street rather than a whole city. The game features five missions that mostly serve as tutorials and a sandbox mode. Gameplay follows as such. With each new day players can place a building. As one might imagine in a simulation game, these serve a wide array of functions from increasing the street’s population, to selling items for profit, to making the environment prettier and so forth.
Players can also customize the shops in various ways at the beginning of the day, such as deciding what ingredients go into the ramen, or what books to stock in the store. Through this, money is earned and street people’s satisfaction is increased. This may sound complicated, but the mechanics flow naturally, and tuning these things feels super intuitive. As the missions pass by, more and more things get added to the mix, yet it never feels overwhelming.
The zen experience of playing the missions takes about 4 to 5 hours. The game itself doesn't offer much in replay value outside of sandbox mode. That said, Minami Lane is $4.99, so it being a bite size package makes sense. I think it’s a lovely way to spend an afternoon or evening, and definitely beats the price of, say, going to the movies. I found it quite cute and cozy. The game isn’t what I’d called difficult, but it’s not a game I could completely turn off my brain. Rather, it hits that cozy sweet spot of being stimulating without being stressful.
That said, there’s not really much more to the game to talk about. There’s very little story to the game, and not a lot of complexity to it. It was chill and fun, but I’m not sure Minami Lane will really stick with in the future. Even so, I didn’t regret my time with it either. There is solid groundwork for a grander city builder. If the devs ever want to expand on this and make a Minami Lane 2, I am on board.
Score: 6/10
IN SUMMARY: An adequate bite sized city builder for the asking price, but those looking for a game with story or depth would do best to look elsewhere.
