WhileMineko’s Night Markettries to emulate many of the social/life simulation games that have paved the way before it, the gameplay experience offered by developer Meowza Games falls short in nearly every way. TheJapanese-themedMineko’s Night Marketstarts out promising, with an extremely pleasing graphics style and an equally enjoyable soundtrack plinking tranquilly away in the background. But then nothing else good happens.
Mineko’s Night Marketfollows the eponymous little girl and her father as they relocate to a sparsely populated island that, according to the few inhabitants, has seen better days. The player is immediately introduced to the local folklore of a giant cat named Nikko, who hails from the nearby Mount Fugu but for some reason can’t get back home. The island has also been overrun by inattentive Agents on a mysterious mission, presumably to hunt down Nikko, and these cliche men in black are unbelievably unprofessional and easily distracted by the little girl and her new friend Bobo.
The thing that stands out most aboutMineko’s Night Marketis this never-fulfilled certainty that maybe the game is just off to a slow start and surely things will kick in soon. Maybe the player just hasn’t progressed far enough yet, but once a certain threshold is passed, the real fun will begin. This never happens, though. Week after week, season after season, the game plods along, somewhat diverting but mostly boring. There’s never any eagerness to play and no excitement to see what’s going to happen next. Even the ultimate task of getting the adorable Nikko back home isn’t enough to muster interest in seeingMinekothrough to the end.
Meowza makes an effort todifferentiateMineko’s Night Marketfrom similar games in the genre. The central gameplay premise is learning new recipes and selling them at the — that’s right — Saturday Night Market. The recipes are interesting, at least. Mineko eventually figures out how to make a Feelings Journal, a Fish Pond, a Bug Diorama, and an Ant Farm - but ultimately these fun creations serve no real purpose.
Many of the items the townsfolk ask for are used to spruce up their houses, and a few of these actually show up in the game. One character asks for a windsock that ends up hanging from a pole after it’s gifted to her; another townsperson wants a planter that gets added onto the house and filled with pretty flowers. But disappointingly, the items that are crafted can’t be used by Mineko herself. The fun toys she collects from the vending machine can’t be displayed in her room, she can’t don the magic cape she makes, and the fishing pond can’t be added to her own house. Most of them just end up being sold, rendering their uniqueness essentially pointless. There’s no reason to make a beautiful Sakura Fan when it’s just going to be sold or given to a villager and disappear.
It all becomes rather monotonous and repetitive. The player spends the majority of their time traveling to different locations to gather supplies, and these areas slowly open up as Mineko obtains new tools to progress the story. Each new place has been infiltrated by Agents, and Mineko must clear them out. This is a task that’s accomplished, oddly enough, by freeing the cats they’re guarding. This might mean halfheartedly sneaking around as they patrol in a very predictable and simplistic pattern, or dressing up in a Delivery Outfit to distract them with food. This same pantomime is carried out every time Mineko enters a new area, with minimal changes. It’s uninteresting, unchallenging, and like much of the game, quickly tedious.
Each Saturday, Mineko takes her wares to the Night Market, and to close out the evening, there’s always some sort of minigame. This might be running around to find hidden lanterns, marching in parade formation and following commands as they’re yelled out, or racing around the track on a cat. There’s a finite number ofminigames inMineko’s Night Market, and the player will find themselves doing the same ones multiple times. Some of them, such as the parade, are barely amusing even the first time they’re encountered, and yet they occur over and over. Even the dialogue is repetitive, with the announcer and marketgoers saying the same empty lines after each minigame. Andthere really seems to be no purpose for winning other than getting a trophy, which then sits forgotten and dusty on a shelf in Mineko’s room as the seasons pass.
The whole game feels like it’s half asleep somehow. Inother life sim games, the townspeople might tend their farms or stroll around, or it might be possible to engage them in conversation to get one of a rotation of responses. There might be a festival to mark the end of every season or some kind of celebration to make the player feel like something has been accomplished.Minekooffers none of that.
The villagers stand around, with only a slight breathing animation to differentiate them from a lifeless paper doll. Some of them change locations from one day to the next, but that’s it. They stand there frozen, giving the same rote responses every single time. Even when it’s raining, they remain outside as if there’s no such thing as weather, adding even more to the eeriness. Some of the townsfolk, such as Right Cat and Left Cat, who are introduced at the beginning of the game, seem to exist for no reason. They never give quests, say the exact same thing throughout the game, and never move except on Saturdays. And the poor town cat, discovered on day one, remains stuck in the broken boat the whole year round, motionless.
But it’s not just the gameplay ofMineko’s Night Marketthat’s in need of an overhaul; the player’s convenience or enjoyment of the sim seems to have been overlooked in other ways as well. The loading times are abysmally long, especially considering how simplistic the entire game is, and there are even regular lag spikes on a decently decked-out PC. And this lag can be particularly frustrating when it foils a timing-based crafting sequence that results in a ruined item and wasted resources. The interface also seems to have been neglected, requiring the player to dig through the Options menu just to quit the game.
And although the townspeople have a load of tasks they want accomplished, there’s no log to track their requests. So when the Night Market finally arrives, unless the player has taken notes manually, it’s easy to forget to buy something that Itao wanted, for example, and have to wait another week in hopes that it shows up again in the rotation of items for sale. Likewise, there’s no easily accessible log of learned recipes, so if a vendor has a specific item at the Night Market, there’s no way to see if it’s a needed ingredient.
The most egregious interface fumble is with the inventory. Mineko’s entire day is spent gathering ingredients and crafting things, and the inventory gets cluttered almost immediately. There’s no auto-sort, meaning an item that’s sold or used will leave an empty space in her bag. The game offers a few category options to group things visually, but some items like fish are oddly excluded from that. And all crafting materials — paper, wood, dyes, flowers, etc. — go into the same category, which doesn’t really help clarify things much, and sometimes items will show up in the wrong group. There are also odd display bugs, such as blank squares where items should be, as evidenced by a heart icon showing how much energy the invisible item restores, for example. Exiting and re-entering the menu will fix these issues, but it all just adds to the general feeling of confusion, disorganization, and lack of polish.
There are other complaints, such as the front-loaded need to make money, which evaporates after Mineko acquires all the crafting tools and benches, immediately negating one of the few mechanics that kept anybody playing. But, ultimately,Mineko’s Night Marketis a melding of boredom and frustration, and a lot of that frustration stems from the fact that the game could have been good. It had the graphics, music, story, and the makings of a gameplay loop that should have been thoroughly engaging. Instead, it just feels like nothing was pushed to its full potential, leaving both the game and the player wanting more.
Mineko’s Night Market
WHERE TO PLAY
Mineko’s Night Market is a game that celebrates Japanese culture while introducing a heartwarming story about friendship, tradition, and many, many cats. Play as Mineko, a curious girl who has just arrived at her new home on a struggling Japanese-inspired island at the base of Mount Fugu.
Mineko’s Night Marketis available on PC and Switch. It releases on May 22, 2025, for PS4, PS5, and Xbox One. Game Rant was provided a PC code for this review.
