I don’t think the Spanish speaking community has experienced a promotional campaign as unique and entertaining as this one Devilish games (devilishly) he let go when he started talking about Minabo. To the point that the speech soon sidestepped the game itself a bit and just focused on talking about it, in a sort of competition to see who could come up with the best joke about the title. This has made Minabo a well-known game that now needs to sprout and launch into the real world, which isn’t that much fun.
Minabo: A walk through life es un life simulator. From the life of the turnips. From the moment they are born and trudging after their parents until they are smiling old men who have left behind pets, friends, family members and even their own turnip kids. And everything that happens in between is life. A life of turnips that come and go, seasons that follow one another and one question that always hangs in the air: how can I feel so identified with Minabo?
Well, with Minabo or with anyone else. This is the default name that appears when the turnip sprouts, but we can name it anything we want. In order to survive we must keep three bars on the green indicator that will wear out as we walk, simulating the passing years. These bars are called physical contact, privacy j belonging, and all beets have them. In order to live a good life, we need to keep our bars full and those of the other turnips we meet along the way. The mechanic is similar to a rhythm game where you have to keep track of which of the other turnips is the emptiest bar and interact with them with the right gesture. There’s a probability component here (although we suspect it’s more of a coincidence since it’s not explained very well). Minabo’s life is sometimes unfair, like everyone else’s.
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If everything stayed the same, Minabo would have less depth than a puddle, but the adventure has it 25 levels (or missions or turnip fields) and in each of them we will live a turnip life with specific vital goals. Sometimes they focus on surviving to a certain age (beet life expectancy is very relative). Sometimes it’s based on a bunch of baby beets, and sometimes it’s based on escaping the everyday apathy represented by the character of Topota madre comes across it and then we have one Free modethat we can unlock once we master the basics and successfully complete the first missions.
Minabo’s problem is that there is nothing more than that. You might fail a quest attempt or two during the game, but in the end you focus on completing the objectives until you complete them, then forget about it all and happily run to your death to try the next level, and then to the next level, one more and it’s over. All this intentionality rethinking our role with the people around us, this message that our happiness comes from making others happy (which we know exists because this title was developed in collaboration with psychologists and experts ), is banished by such a simple experience that Minabo soon loses all of his power. Minabo: A Walk Through Life (because in reality it’s all in the subtitle) remains too brief an experience to leave any traces of gaming merit.
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But I also recognize that there are good things in Minabo. The artistic design is beautiful, the turnip character animations are very successful, and the music and sound design is a strength that I will admit has kept me going beyond the premise of completing objectives throughout the game cycle.
The problem I think people might find is that apart from some funny names and what is surely the most effective marketing campaign in the history of Spanish development, Minabo, people are not going to take it seriously and he can’t counter an attractive playable Offer that goes beyond the joke.
