A certain type of person might immediately close out of this review after reading this following statement, but I kind of want to get this thesis out of the way as fast as I can, tossing it away from me towards an unsuspecting audience like a hot potato: I’ve grown to have a bit of disdain for so-called “cosy” games. This dislike is coming from a few separate places, I think, but if I were to really get down to brass tacks, I think essentially I just prefer to be challenged in some way or another by the games I’m playing. Whether that be from actual gameplay or a storyline forcing me to dwell in my own discomfort doesn’t really matter, as long as there’s something to chew on. And to be clear, cosy games can absolutely be this! A Short Hike, Before the Green Moon, and Lil Gator Game are all able to present you with worlds to explore and get lost in and tell interesting, well-told stories, all while managing to make me feel warm, fuzzy, and nostalgic. But, as someone who watches his wife play a lot of games being billed as cosy, I’ve seen enough repetitive collecting, gathering, farming, fishing, and foraging games to know these are exceptions. I’m 30 or 40 years old, and I do not need another game whose existence is entirely predicated on the fact that there are cute bears and/or frogs chopping wood and growing radishes in it.

My first impressions of Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town had me worried I was playing another “no thoughts, head empty” gathering and chore simulator, albeit one with an incredible presentation. It didn’t help coming into this game with a bit of experience with the previous entry, Shin chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation—The Endless Seven-Day Journey. Summer Vacation ended up being a spiritual successor to the Japanese-only Boku no Natsuyasumi, a series of games in which you spend a month of your summer vacation in the Japanese countryside as a 9-year-old boy. While cosy and absolutely boiling over with bittersweet nostalgia for childhood, Boku no Natsuyasumi also ended up being an intensely fascinating game about time management and learning the ins and outs of your environment and the people inhabiting it. Simply put, you’re not going to be able to see and do everything worth experiencing on your first playthrough, which makes taking your acquired knowledge into a second (or third or fourth or fifth…) playthrough all the more rewarding. Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation managed to fit the developer’s square block of intended cosiness into the round hole of people being intimidated by time management and “screwing up” by setting the game in a time loop, thus letting the player start to put their accumulated knowledge to use much faster and in a way that felt less punishing. I think Boku no Natsuyasumi is one of the most fascinating relics in the medium of video games that we have, and I was excited to see what Shiro and the Coal Town would do to improve or shake up what had been established already.

To start the game up and find that there was no time limit, a seemingly endless laundry list of hand hold-y quests, and some combination of collecting and gathering and farming and fishing and foraging to do on every screen was pretty deflating, to be quite honest. To my Boku no Natsuyasumi-pilled brain, this was a sanding off of everything I found interesting about both that series and the previous Shin chan game, and initially felt unforgivable. Despite all that, judging art for what it isn’t is just about my biggest pet peeve as a critic, so I decided to just let the gorgeous art style and charm sweep me into what I hoped would be a cosy game coma for the next 15 or so hours. And… that’s actually exactly what ended up happening. Within a couple of hours, all of my initial trepidation and hand wringing over Shiro and the Coal Town being something other than what it is had faded away into blissful collecting, gathering, farming, fishing, and foraging, all done with a bowl of pretzels next to me while playing. No, there’s no aforementioned set amount of days before the game ends or stamina management to contend with here. Every time your screen transitions, the time slightly advances, but this is more to give you a set routine, gameplay loop, and context for what you’re doing than to be any kind of time limit. There are certain things that require the passage of time, such as growing vegetables or certain fish and bugs only appearing at specific times of day, but otherwise you’re free to spend every in-game day the way you want—even if it feels like there’s some time-sensitive story moments going on, that’s not actually the case, as you can generally engage with the main storyline when you feel ready. Look, this napa lettuce isn’t going to grow itself; the fate of Coal Town can wait a second.

The game is divided up into two main areas, Unbent Village and Coal Town, neither of which are massive but are just big enough to make learning how to navigate them feel rewarding and unlocking shortcuts exciting. Fun and goofy NPCs abound, with just about every single one of them having a chore or several for you to complete for them throughout the course of the game. This almost never amounts to anything other than finding the right materials to build something or the right ingredients to cook something or catching the specified fish or bug, but the reward for me was just getting more silly dialogue between each inhabitant of the world and Shinnosuke (the main protagonist). 

The major exception to these fetch quests when it comes to activities you’re doing in the game is a minecart racing minigame that surprisingly has more depth to it than you’re probably expecting. There are a lot of optional minecarts and attachments to purchase, each with their own stats and advantages and disadvantages, and way more tracks than I was anticipating when the game introduces the activity in the final third of the game. The times you’re required to engage with this minigame for the sake of progression were pretty easy, but going for all the rewards and perfect races genuinely seemed like it would require a fair bit of dedication, so there is a bit of gameplay meat on this vibey bone if that’s what you’re looking for. But with how late it was introduced, I found myself only participating in a race or two more than was required of me before deciding to press on and advance the game to its end point.

You thankfully do not need to be familiar with Crayon Shin-Chan, the manga and anime franchise that’s been in production since 1990, to enjoy Shiro and the Coal Town. I know this because, besides these Shin-Chan video games, I am not at all familiar with the series! There are of course references for long-time fans to point and smile at here, but you don’t need prior knowledge that Shinnosuke’s uncle is a cheapskate or his grandpa is a pervert to comprehend those moments in the story here. And while the story itself is largely straightforward and simple, there’s just enough in the way of twists here, such as discovering the connection between Coal Town and the Unbent village, to keep it interesting. And maybe it’s because of how low stakes the game had been for 99% of its run time, but the final story twist, saying goodbye to the Unbent Village, and subsequent end credits sequence genuinely got me to tear up. Then again, I am a sucker for credits set to a song with Japanese lyrics while a vehicle drives on a road at sunset, so maybe the game had my number from the start.


 

Verdict

3.5/5

And that’s a good summation of my feelings towards Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town. It may not have much on the surface of what I’m generally looking for out of video games besides its absolutely gorgeous art style, but it serves as a good reminder of the pure joy that video games are able to elicit out of me. Sometimes I just have to remember to loosen up and let them.


Release date: October 24th, 2024

Platforms: PC & Nintendo  Switch

Price: £24.99

Version tested: PC (on Steam Deck)

Many thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

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