Minabo - A walk through life

Minabo is a curiosity in the Nintendo Switch catalog, showcasing a fun play on words on the outside and a powerful game concept that doesn't quite delve too deeply.

Minabo has a beautiful art design, with the turnip characters’ animation extremely well accomplished, and the music and sound design are certainly a strength, which keeps you in the game cycle beyond the premise of overcoming objectives. The problem is that people aren’t going to take Minabo that seriously, and it can’t counter with a compelling gameplay proposition that goes beyond the joke.

One issue that Minabo may face is that, beyond its amusing names based on spanish jokes, and what I'm sure has been the most effective marketing campaign in the history of Spanish game development, people may not take it seriously.

In spite of the fact that the adorable art-style (which looks like it was plucked straight out of a children’s book) is a treat on the eyes, and the accompanying music - although rather repetitive - is very pleasant, Minabo: A walk through life isn’t a game I find relaxing, but just rather boring. While other social simulator games like The Sims give players full control over their characters’ personalities and what they do with their lives, Minabo just sees every vegetable plod along at a painfully leisurely pace, achieving very little other than interacting with their brethren in the most basic ways and sprouting children from the ground. Despite being inoffensive for a short period of time, this isn’t the engaging new cosy game that you’ve been waiting for.

Minabo - A walk through life takes some basic systems and fails to make them fun in any meaningful way. While the thought experiment is interesting, it’s just not much of a game.