Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is based on the long-running manga and anime series, Crayon Shin-chan (Kureshin in Japanese), about a peculiar five-year-old named Shinnosuke (Shin-chan) and his family. The game follows on from 2022’s successful Western release Shin chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation – The Endless Seven-Day Journey, which places this in the lineage of Kaz Ayabe’s Bokunatsu series. This time we are working with a fortunately shorter title.
At the start of the game, Shin-chan’s family moves to the countryside as his dad gets a work assignment near where he grew up in Akita. Playing as Shin-chan, you are tasked with exploring the village and helping the other people who live there through fetching, fishing and bug-catching quests.
However, it’s not long before the titular Coal Town is introduced. Shin-chan follows his dog Shiro to a train platform in a grassy field. A unique carriage stops at a station and takes him and Shiro to a mining town very different from the rural setting Shin-chan calls home—in fact, it seems to be a place that exists entirely within Shin-chan’s active imagination, hinted at by the way wakes up in his house whenever he leaves Coal Town.
Imaginary or otherwise, Coal Town has a lot of problems that Shin-chan can help with, usually with the help of the town’s self-proclaimed genius inventor. The rest of the game is spent between Akita and Coal Town. Each area has its own characters and activities, and completing quests often requires moving back and forth between towns to collect the right supplies.
There’s nothing too mind-blowing about the core gathering mechanic at the heart of the game. Catching insects is achieved with one push of a button and a swing of the net. The camera perspective sometimes makes it hard to tell where the insects are in relation to Shin-chan, but it doesn’t bother too much. Fishing is a bit more interesting as there are two different rods: one for catching standard fish and the other for shallow water crustaceans. However, fishing itself is just a matter of waiting for the fish to approach and then holding the button when the fish is on the hook.
Herbs spawn on the ground in Akita, unlike ore and other small items in Coal City. Shin-chan can also grow his own vegetables in the gardens outside his house—again, just a simple loop of planting, watering, and waiting a few days for the harvest.
Almost every task that pushes the game forward requires collecting the right items. While not overly exciting, the need to collect and purchase items from various locations encourages regular gathering and exploration. The good thing is that the hand-painted backgrounds of Shiro and Coal Town are so beautiful that we didn’t mind running around all day and night to find what we were looking for. Green scenery overflowing with flowers and leaves, secret passages between rice paddies and sparkling waterways, and warmly lit home scenes can be found in Akita.
Coal Town brings an even more worn and dusty beauty to its dilapidated staircases, comically crowded markets and metal-clad cityscapes. Multiple sections of Akita and Coal Town are blocked at the start of the game. Completing quests to discover new areas is almost more exciting because of the new artwork you get to see than the plot-related elements.
The art shows off really well in handheld mode, but it’s admittedly even prettier while playing on the dock. The sound design complements the art style well—the atmospheric music seamlessly changes tone as we move between areas, and the voice acting offsets Shin Chan’s plethora of goofy sounds with a softer feel to the other characters’ conversations.
Shiro and Coal Town’s rich cast of characters is wonderful to interact with Shin-chan’s weirder side. For a boy of only five years old, he is bizarrely obsessed with dating and tends to take a shine to grown women. There’s a fair amount of fart jokes within the family scenes that take place when Shin-chan goes home each night, but also some heartwarming moments of parents commenting on their two young children as they sleep. Shin-chan’s grandfather seems to share his goofy childish humor and introduces a key item early in the game: the sassy friendship stone. It is described as “a stone that looks like a pair of cheeks. It shines with a mysterious light.” Our personal favorite touch of silliness is called the “Butt-Only Alien,” which allows Shin-chan to run faster when his butt is in the air.
The real shining star of Shiro and Coal Town are the cart races. Tragically, cart racing doesn’t become available until a few hours into the game, after the elevator in Coal Town has been repaired and Shin-chan has acquired a device to help him reach the pedals. Multiple race tracks can be unlocked, each with its own rewards and challenges. In fun classic style, races are won not by crossing the finish line first, but by collecting and retaining the most points within the time limit. We loved unlocking new upgrades to build the wacky custom stroller of our dreams
Conclusion
Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is an incredibly beautiful game balanced with a good amount of quirky humor. While not mechanically complex, it’s a charming, slice-of-life game that’s likely to delight all fans of the Crayon Shin-Chan series.
