Watch the Review in 3 Minutes for Mineko’s Night Market, a crafting-based adventure game developed by Meowza Games.
Mineko’s Night Market Review Transcript
Mineko’s Night Market is a crafting-based adventure game developed by Meowza Games.
You play as Mineko, a young girl who recently moved to a small island that’s seen better days with her father. The house you bought and most other places on the island are rundown since many townsfolk have left, leaving the town’s iconic event, the weekly night market, mostly abandoned. Shortly after arriving, you learn the legend of a very large cat, find said cat, and try to help it get home.
Gameplay mostly consists of traveling to different parts of the island to find crafting materials, such as picking flowers, gathering cat fur, mining, and more. Most materials require a button-prompt microgame when gathering, with better performance yielding more of the material. However, the incredibly simple microgames are a tad too time-consuming, making the immense number of materials you need to gather even more tedious. Crafting an item also has a microgame. While they’re pleasant, you can’t bulk-create items, and the microgames along with the number of menu options you have to select each time for each item also become tedious.
The point of creating items is so you can sell them or give specific items to townsfolk so they’ll give you new recipes so you can make more items. Aiding the townsfolk also expands the night market, adding new shops and games to play. However, aside from a few story-specific items, the point of all of it is to get more money to buy more things to craft more items. So if making items for the sake of selling them so you can make more isn’t your jam, this loop is going to be as unfulfilling to you as it was to me.
The visual presentation is mostly delightful. The colorful world and characters are charming with a sense of cohesion and personality. The music is relaxing and tranquil, though there isn’t nearly enough of it to fill the long stretches of gathering materials.
The story advances at a glacial pace. After ten hours, I was still trying to craft one of the early key items. It had been my only major objective for so long that I was starting to suspect there was a bug keeping one of the material components I needed to craft it from showing up, or I somehow missed where it was every time I looked. However, other advancements happened, such as the night market expanding and learning new recipes, so that might just be the game’s true pace.
Due to the tedium, I wouldn’t recommend the game to any category of folks. While the gameplay is basic enough for children and new players, it’s not engaging enough for either of them. Ultimately, it’s a slow burn that takes a long time to go nowhere interesting. For folks who want an easy and repetitive game to play while watching or listening to something, there are far better options.
Mineko’s Night Market is available now for $19.99 on PC and Nintendo Switch, and October 26 for PlayStation 4 and 5 and Xbox One.
