Spirited Shinnosuke.
Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town marks the third spiritual successor to the Boku no Natsuyasumi series, a PlayStation-published adventure game franchise in which a child spends their summer vacation in the rural Japanese countryside. Millennium Kitchen, a co-developer on Shiro and the Coal Town (with h.a.n.d.), also developed the Boku no Natsuyasumi series. Furthermore, it co-developed both of BnN’s other recent successors, Shin chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation and Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid. As someone who has played all three of Millennium Kitchen’s most recent releases, I’m pleased to report that its latest is the best of the lot.
Structurally, Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town will be most familiar to those who have played the other Shin chan adventure game published in the West in 2022. Like Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation, five-year-old Shinnosuke Nohara joins his family on a summer vacation to a remote Japanese village – in this case Akita. You then catch bugs, fish, complete fetch quests for the quirky, silly members of the village, and explore a gorgeously drawn countryside while progressing a primary storyline. It’s chill vibe, low stakes third-person adventure gaming at its finest.
On your third day in Akita, your dog Shiro brings you a magical rock that allows you to, almost like a Studio Ghibli movie, take a trolley to the far off land of Coal Town. Coal Town is an entire second area to explore, a dreamy town that appears to be in permanent golden hour. The town, which has its own cast of charming characters, is in dire economic and environmental straits. It’s up to you, a goofy five-year old boy, to save it.
Like its predecessor you navigate the game in a way that feels like a cross between the original Resident Evil and the original Animal Crossing. You have a fixed camera as you run around in third person, and the game’s maps are broken down into segments based on camera angle. When you move to different areas of the map, the game’s day-night cycle is ticked forward. This means that you technically have a limited amount of time to do what you need to do – each day takes about 10-20 minutes – but there’s no calendar or time crunch, though, so Shiro and the Coal Town has a structure much more akin to a traditional story-based adventure game.
Each of the two towns has its own storyline, characters, activities, and community needs, and as such you divide your time between the two to move the overarching narrative forward. This amounts to deciding when you want to dedicate time to material gathering (like minerals, plants, bugs and fish), when you want to do whatever the next main story beat is, and when you want to pursue various sidequests. To be clear, it, like its predecessor, operates primarily in a fetch quest structure. You’re almost always getting something to give to someone.
Although this threatens to get tedious the way its predecessor was at times, the game’s relaxed pacing, top-notch slice-of-life narrative, and second location to explore provides plenty of welcome momentum.
I was particularly fond of the mine cart races, a new mode introduced about halfway through the story that allows you to compete against CPUs on Mario Kart-esque courses for additional materials. The objective is to earn more points than your opponent by picking up gems on winding, curving tracks while regulating your speed based on when you know a sharp turn is coming up. There’s also a light customization piece where you can outfit your cart with new armor, rockets, a drill, and more. Simple-yet-addicting, the mode is a blast and a standout highlight of the experience.
As you would hope from a slice-of-life adventure game, the audiovisual experience is decadent. Cel-shaded characters are animated beautifully, and whether you’re running through Akita’s rice paddies or looking at tchotchkes outside Coal Town’s general store, there’s an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia that makes it clear these Millennium Kitchen adventure games are stylistically in a league of their own. The soundscape is similarly understated but perfect.
I think what impresses me most is how much heavy lifting this art is able to do. On a mechanical level, Shiro and the Coal Town is an adventure game where you run on linear paths through fixed camera angles and complete fetch quest after fetch quest. But the visuals, audio and writing are so charming that I found myself getting a little emotional as I looked back on my own childhood and forward to when my son is Shinnosuke’s age a few years from now and we can go on our own family summer vacations. It’s a game that does a lot with a little, if that makes sense.
I have two small-to-medium complaints. The first is that, as I hinted to earlier, the simplicity of the game means things sometimes get a little repetitive and tedious in rare moments. It’s not too bad, but it happens.
The second is a bit more complicated, and not exactly Shiro and the Coal Town’s fault. In the last couple years (at least in the West), we got three very similar adventure games co-developed by Millennium Kitchen where you’re doing many of the same kinds of activities. Yes, even with Natsu-Mon’s Breath of the Wild-lite exploration. Although this latest release is my favorite of the lot, I feel Millennium Kitchen and its development partners need to change things slightly more radically for future releases. For example, more fun action elements like the mine cart mode would be greatly appreciated.
But let me be clear: Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is a great experience that has me fully invested in Millennium Kitchen’s flavor of adventure games. Between a well told slice-of-life narrative, an improved structure, a super fun minecart racing mode and some really pretty art, this is a top tier adventure game for anyone hungry for some weapons-grade nostalgia.