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Minabo

Minabo: A Walk Through Life

Minabo is born, grows, socialises, mates, puts on a little hat, and dies. All that while providing insights into human nature.

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The marketing campaign for Minabo by Devilish Games was one of the most unique and entertaining (and devilish) experiences for the Spanish-speaking community ever, all based on traditional puns. However, the game itself took a backseat as people focused on making jokes and funny witty remarks about the title. As a result, Minabo became a well-known game, but it now has the challenge of breaking into the real world, which is not as fun and witty.

Minabo

Minabo: A Walk Through Life is a unique life simulator, but with a twist - it's all about turnips (nabo means turnip in Spanish... and penis)! From the moment these little veggies are born and struggle to crawl after their parents, to their final days as elderly turnips who have left behind pets, friends, family, and even their own turnip offspring, Minabo explores the entire veggie life cycle. And everything in between is just life - a life full of turnips coming and going, seasons passing, and a lingering question: how can I relate so deeply to a game about vegetables?

The default name that appears when the little turnip sprouts from the ground is Minabo, but we can name them whatever we please. As we progress through the years, we must maintain three bars to survive: Physical Contact, Intimacy, and Belonging. All 'nabos' have them. To live a good life, we have to keep our own bars full and also keep the bars of other 'nabos' we meet along the way filled. The mechanics are similar to a rhythm game, where you have to observe which bar is the emptiest for each nabo you encounter and perform the correct gesture to fill it up. However, there's also an element of probability at play (although we suspect it's more like chance, as it's not explained too well), which can make Minabo's life feel unfair.

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If that was all there was to it, Minabo would have less depth than a puddle, but the game features 25 missions. From surviving until a certain age (which can be quite relative for turnips) to having a large family of baby 'nabos', or even escaping the monotony of daily life as represented by Topota, the giant turnip-eater mole character. There's also a free mode that can be unlocked after mastering the basics and completing the first missions.

All this makes us rethink our role with the people around us. The message that our happiness comes from making others happy (which we know exists, because this title has been developed in collaboration with psychologists and experts) is relegated by such a simple experience that it makes Minabo lose all its charm. Minabo: A Walk Through Life (because it's really all in the subtitle) remains too brief an experience to leave a lasting impression on playful merit.

The problem with Minabo is that there's not much more to it than that. You may fail a mission attempt or two throughout the game, but ultimately you become focused on reaching the objectives until you complete them, then quickly forget about it all and happily run towards death to try the next level, and then another, and that's it.

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But I also recognise that there are good things about Minabo. The artistic design is beautiful, with well-executed animations of the turnip characters, and the music and sound design are a strong point that kept me in the gameplay cycle beyond just the premise of achieving objectives.

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. And unfortunately, the game doesn't have a compelling gameplay proposal to counteract this and engage players beyond the humour factor.

MinaboMinabo
06 Gamereactor UK
6 / 10
+
Lovely art. Well-crafted music and sound. The best marketing campaign in history.
-
Too simple. Repetitive mechanics.
overall score
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Minabo: A Walk Through LifeScore

Minabo: A Walk Through Life

REVIEW. Written by Alberto Garrido

Minabo is born, grows, socialises, mates, puts on a little hat, and dies. All that while providing insights into human nature.



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