Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town Review (PC)

One of the toughest parts of parenting in a video game-driven family is figuring out what exactly is age-appropriate content for your kids. Giving them content that has themes of violence and mayhem, like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim might prompt some questions and cause undue stress for a young gamer. Giving them something like Tetris might bore the tears out of them (no, seriously), as kids these days need more challenges than we older gamers needed back in the day. Finding that sweet spot that delivers good content while also keeping it age-appropriate can be a challenge.

Thankfully, developer h.a.n.d., Inc. and publisher Neos Corporation have brought a solution to such a quandary.  Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is a great mixture of adventure, multi-quest challenges, and somewhat open-world exploration. The game is a great primer for the young gamer in your household and will put their mental fortitude to the test while not pushing them too hard with impossible content. It’s that perfect sweet spot that even seasoned Skyrim adult gamers can appreciate.

So, sit back, pet that adorable white dog, and let’s get going on this adventure with Shin Chan.

Gameplaying
The story of Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is just a basic childhood adventure. You play as Shin Chan, a boy who enjoys getting into trouble as much as he enjoys chatting it up with the locals. Shin spends his day wandering the village of Akita, collecting butterflies, growing veggies, interacting with other kids, and just being an endlessly curious lad. Eventually, his curiosity lands him in a place called Coal Town, where he is tasked with helping businesses and people grow and connect. Not a bad story for those not looking for anything too deep. That simple story connects well with the gameplay structure.

The gameplay in Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town can best be generalized as a lite version of Skyrim. Shin wanders around gathering goods, taking on quests, and eventually must deal with a main quest – Coal Town. If you blur out the details, the structure here is straight-up exploration and adventure, and that structure works well for Shin’s journey.

When I first began this review about a month ago, the first 20 minutes of gameplay had me immediately thinking that this game is watered down with beautiful visuals but limited in content. It was obvious Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town was built for a younger crowd, so I dreaded having to drag myself through it, as such games can be boring at best. For example, the first big task of the game was to catch bugs in a net, which seemed like a remedial task, and it was at first. I figured that the devs and publisher were catering to a super young demographic and avoiding any potential gameplay complication. As the game continued, I began to see how wrong I was about the entire structure and purpose.

The world of Shin Chan might have started small with tiny tasks of capturing bugs, but as the story of his day-to-day life continued, his world steadily became larger. He went from gathering bugs to meeting a bug lady who wanted him to collect new ones. If he collected new bugs, she would pay him for his efforts. That monetary system would be invaluable later in Shin’s journey.

The bug-catching adventure then led to meeting new people, such as a group of kids who were tasked with blocking and protecting certain side streets of Akita. Each child had a request for Shin, and each request brought Shin to a new part of Akita. The game then expanded to collection, crafting at times, and exploration. All driven by the kids and the bug lady.

As the day went on, and the collecting became bigger, as did Shin’s world, the game then threw in a timed day. Shin only had a limited amount of time before he had to eat dinner and go to bed. This meant making the most out of the time he had and progressing as much as possible in a non-stop exploration gameplay structure.

After going to sleep and waking, the next morning the game introduced growing veggies in a garden, which would come in handy at some point in the story, especially when Shin Chan finally made it to Coal Town. The veggies grown expanded the game into yet another task, which was essentially crafting, where Shin had to plant, water, and maintain the garden on a multi-day schedule. Growing veggies meant that Shin could use them to create other items needed during the story, such as helping a restaurant expand its menu in Coal Town or helping Shin’s grandmother create a dinner for the family.

With every inch-by-inch progression in the game, the world became bigger and more interesting. The simplicity that I assumed at the beginning quickly became complicated and well-designed, especially when Shin eventually found a train to Coal Town, which opened the world of Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town into so much more than just a simple, one-dimensional kid’s gaming experience. Now, the elements of Akita were spilling over to a new town, and a back-and-forth adventure was kicked off.

With all these elements in full swing, Shin’s journey started to expand further by including individual sub-missions from people in Akita and Coal Town. People that Shin met would need help and individual tasks, side quests, if you will, came in droves and helped drive Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town into this massively beautiful and huge open-world adventure that no one, especially me, expected to find.

This was a fun and gorgeous journey.

The gameplay in Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town has all the markings of a young gamer’s open-world adventure. While not as big as Skyrim’s scope, the game is nonetheless large enough to keep kids, and probably adults, occupied with meaningful and entertaining tasks. For example, when you get to Coal Town, you will meet an inventor. That inventor will task you with collecting whack-a-doodle pieces and parts to help create new tech for Coal Town. Some of the tech is understandable and easy, while other tech is just adorable fun. Collecting pieces and parts just to see what the result is makes for a fun time, especially knowing that the innocent backdrop is always going to be interesting and engaging.

Now, outside of gathering, crafting, questing, and the main story, the game has its own set of challenges, such as discovering bugs for a bug book, or just small achievements the game keeps up with. Again, a lot is going on in this game and all of it is worthwhile. I had to tear myself away from the gameplay just to write this review and that’s saying a lot considering the young audience this was intentionally built for – I’m not supposed to have this much fun with a game like this.

The only knock I have on this game, and this is probably where my seasoned gamer expectations deviate from a young gamer’s, is how things are gathered. Items, such as bugs, veggies, rocks, or parts, randomly appear in places as you move from scene to scene. This means that you can leave a street, come back two minutes later, and suddenly there is an item in that scene. It’s completely random and unpredictable. You have no idea if that ‘thing’ you might need to complete a recipe, or an invention is going to show up before the day ends. More times than not, the ‘thing’ shows up, but there is a chance it doesn’t immediately. For example, finding a rhinoceros beetle to get through a roadblock in Akita was a tall task that wasn’t immediately apparent or available. I knew the quest, and I understood the assignment, but getting the game to drum up that beetle was a challenge. Eventually, it did, but the wait had me tapping my mental foot a bit.

Anyway, the randomness of items is small potatoes when considering what else the game has you occupied with. The non-linear fashion of exploration and discovery will mean that random items you might be waiting for can be put on the back burner while Shin does other tasks. The game just keeps going, regardless of quests needing completion. Kids will certainly pick up on that quickly, which will help keep their attention locked into the gameplay.

Overall, the gameplay in Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is huge and entertaining! There is so much to do, a variety of tasks to be had, and plenty of side quests and crafting to accomplish. There isn’t an iota of boringness in this game. More importantly, all the gameplay fits and makes sense within Shin Chan’s world, where it is kept tightly under control to keep young gamers engaged with consistent and ever-flowing content.

Anime presentation
When you first launch the game, it distracts you with the visuals. While it is drumming up the gameplay content slowly and surely, the visuals will keep your attention, as they are anime-level graphics. This looks like an animated film. It features visually familiar characters, beautifully drawn environments that set the tone for the adventure, and fun dialogue that makes every character that Shin meets unique and entertaining to interact with on a task-to-task basis.

Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is a gorgeous, well-acted, and written piece of gaming that will connect with younger gamers from the get-go. The devs did a fantastic job representing Shin Chan’s world in a game form.

On that sweet note, let’s wrap this review up.

Conclusion
Shin Chan: Shiro and the Coal Town from developer h.a.n.d., Inc. and publisher Neos Corporation, is a wonderful introduction to open-world games for a younger gaming audience. It features beautifully drawn animation, fantastic environments, deep gameplay, and plenty of exploration to keep players engaged and locked in.