• Price: $14.99 USD (currently on sale for $13.49 until May 5th)
• Developer: Devilish Games
• Publisher: SelectaVision
• Release Date: April 28, 2023

A review code was kindly provided by Devilish Games on behalf of SelectaVision. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

You know, I don’t think I’ve actually ever eaten a turnip. I’ve planted them in farm sims, but never eaten one. Which should make the stars of this game let out a sigh of relief! Minabo – A walk through life has you play as a turnip who builds relationships and grows as a person turnip in a relaxed setting. It looks and sounds quirky and cute, so let’s see how it goes!

There are two different modes in the game: Free Mode and Mission Mode. Oddly, Free Mode is locked until you’ve completed the first 5 missions in Mission Mode. So I started to play the missions – there are 25 total, and they each have 3 different requirements for things like the minimum amount of time that your turnip has to be kept alive, their relationships, how many kids/pets they have, etc. It doesn’t seem like you can pause a mission and come back to it. Free Mode allows you to exit and continue the same playthrough though.

The gameplay starts with your turnip sprouting from the ground, and you get to name them. It seems like you get a random family type each time. There were playthroughs where I had a single parent, two parents, two parents and a sibling, a single parent with a sibling, and it even seemed like your parent(s) could adopt a pre-existing sibling for you. It was nice to see such varied family compositions in each playthrough.

The goal of the game is to “build your social circle and achieve your life goals by interacting with other turnips.” To stay alive, you have to keep your “need bars” full. These need bars consist of physical affection, intimacy, and belonging. You also need to keep the need bars full for your family and friends – otherwise their lifespans decrease!

As you and your parents walk across the screen, time will pass and the meters will start going down. Your turnip gets a virtue or flaw for their personality in each stage of life, which affect your relationships. You can check on the other turnips’ need bars using the left joystick or the directional pad, and if any of their meters are orange or red you need to help them meet their social needs by pressing the button affiliated with that stat.

But be careful, because a turnip may not want your affection at that point in time. Each of the actions affiliated with the 3 stats will display a meter as well, and it shows you the likelihood that your affection will be accepted. If they reject you, that stat decreases for both of you unless you placate them.

Family can be great, but it’s nice to have some friends as well. You’ll run into some turnips you don’t know as you keep walking along, and their meters tend to start off in the red or orange zones. Every time you interact with someone, the meter for that type of affection will go up if they accept it or down if they don’t. It seems like they’re more likely to accept an interaction if that meter is already kind of low.

You apparently need to have 5 positive interactions to take friendships to the next levels. New turnips will start as strangers, change to acquaintances, and then go to friends, best friends, and possibly even romantic partners!

You can have multiple partners at once, so polyamorous turnips are a thing here. (Never thought that would be a phrase I’d use! 😂) Once you reach the partner stage with someone, 5 more positive interactions get you to the “Procreate” stage, which can occur multiple times. That’s right – you can have little turnip sprouts of your own! 💕

Unfortunately, you can’t name your new bundles of joy, but they’re pretty cute. They even have your character do a little “peekaboo” gesture when giving affection to the sprout. If you don’t want kids even in virtual space though, they’ve got you covered with some adorable turnip dogs and cats. You meet them the same way you meet the other turnip “people” – by walking up to them, then giving them affection.

I really loved that they added pets as an option. It may have been nice if there were some turnip bunnies or something too for a little more variety, but the dogs and cats were so cute. They even included sound effects for both the animal and people turnips.

Although I liked a lot about the pets, it was kind of annoying getting them from wild animal to pet status because you had to leash them and continue walking until the meter fills up. But the leashes kept breaking on me, and I’d have to start all over again until I managed to befriend the animal.

Another issue was that managing everyone in my group started to become overwhelming after about 3 people. They sort of crowd together when walking across the screen sometimes. While there are some minor differences in their appearances, I often had a hard time distinguishing between them, as well as toggling between their interaction displays.

It didn’t help that some of them would walk offscreen ahead of me as I attempted to manage the other turnips’ needs. I think if they had included an option for you to walk automatically – allowing you to focus solely on the socializing – it could have been more manageable.

Seeing as the turnips’ lifespans go down when their social needs aren’t met (including yours), it’s kind of important to keep them happy. I had some turnips die pretty young, although others successfully made it to old age before doing so. When a turnip dies, they collapse and a gravestone appears, and your character will pause to allow you to choose a reaction to the death. My character always cried – sound effects included – when they lost a friend.

And speaking of life and death, there are other factors that come into play. Sometimes you will encounter items such as apples, which you give to a turnip in your group to increase their lifespan. Or you can decrease their lifespan by 10 whole years with a poisonous mushroom!

If you really dislike a turnip in your group, there’s another item that results in instant death. You can’t avoid giving these items to someone, but you can only give them to a turnip that is still onscreen with you and hasn’t gone ahead. Poisonous food isn’t all you have to worry about – in some missions there’s some kind of monster called Topota that will eat you if you walk too slowly. I didn’t love that mechanic because it made it a lot harder to manage my turnips while trying to keep walking.

You don’t just encounter deadly things, though. They try to swing back to the fun and cute side of things by having you collect little hats for your turnip. Every once in a while, a hat-wearing turnip stranger will appear. Play rock-paper-scissors with them and win to get a hat like that for yourself!

Besides enhancing your turnip’s appearance, these hats also have special effects on your interactions. One hat may increase the success rate of one type of interaction, while another will halve the effects of unsuccessful interactions on your “need bar” meters. There are more than 50 hats, and they appear to carry over across each mission you play. I liked the hats, but I wish we could dress up the other turnips – including the pets – and add clothes to the mix too.

Aesthetically, I liked a lot about Minabo. I’m usually a sucker for cute and weird stuff. But they also added a touch of beauty to the game with the lovely way that the trees continued to change their leaves as the seasons passed. The music also set the tone nicely, I thought.

This is definitely a unique and creative game. However, it somehow manages to do too much and too little at the same time. Managing a large group of turnips gets chaotic, yet it also seemed like there wasn’t much to do. The game ran smoothly for me, but the walking pace felt really slow.

Also, socialization is important, but turnips would need nutrients to grow too. They potentially could have made this a simple yet cozy survival simulator by adding the need for water, sunlight, or maybe something like fertilizer as a treat? I like a lot of the ideas – the large variety of family units on display was especially nice – but for me there needed to be better organization to manage your turnips and also some additional activities to liven things up.