• Price: $9.99 USD
• Developer: npckc
• Publisher: RAWRLAB Games
• Release Date: February 20, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by RAWRLAB Games on behalf of npckc. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

I enjoy a fairly wide variety of genres and graphic styles, and Marron’s Day appealed to me with its cute, retro pixel art style. Starting the game, we meet Marron the bunny, who gets really excited about special events in her town. Sadly, not enough participants have signed up to run stalls for the town festival this year, so the mayor had no choice but to cancel it.

But Marron is not one to give up so easily! She goes to the mayor to get them to change their mind, and they say that if she can convince 6 people to sign up for a stall, that will be enough to put the festival back on the schedule.

Undeterred, Marron hops around town and asks everyone if they’ll join in on the fun. Of course, the other animals won’t sign up right away – that would defeat the purpose of the game! You’ll have to help them with something first to get them to agree to manage a stall.

The tasks are all pretty simple for the most part, such as asking the town’s residents for their opinion or picking some dandelions. A few tasks are slightly more complex than that; you may have to play a mini game or solve a basic “puzzle.”

The simplicity could be a good thing or not, depending on your personal preferences. I do think that younger players or those unused to games with hidden areas/items may have some trouble with those parts of the game.

You’ll do a lot of traveling back and forth between the different screens in (and around) town. There are collectibles – fish and some hidden rocks – to track down for some requests.

If you enjoy unlocking achievements, the game has a handful of them to earn, including a few for the completion of the fish and rock collections! (I thought they could have shortened the time it takes for fish to bite, as it felt somewhat excessive – especially in a cozy game.)

While the objective of the game is to convince 6 people to sign up for stalls, that’s just the minimum required to hold the event. After meeting the initial goal, keep going until you have 10 stalls to really impress the mayor.

It took me about 2-3 hours to get every stall possible and all of the collectibles. Once the festival begins and you’ve checked out the stalls, the credits roll. But you can continue that save to unlock the rest of the achievements and have a little more fun.

One of my favorite parts of the game was the adorably quirky “Battle Eraser” mini game, which has players use limited points to equip their eraser with 4 possible actions before the battle begins. This could be a combination of attacks, defense, healing, doing nothing, and more!

You “roll” your eraser at the beginning of each turn, and the game randomly selects one of the four equipped skills you chose prior to battle. At first glance Battle Eraser may seem pretty easy, but each neighbor has their own strategy, so you will have to change the actions you equip for each character you battle.

One of the requests actually involves helping the creators of Battle Eraser fine-tune their game. I really liked how helping others was a key theme in Marron’s Day; it makes the town feel like a proper community.

And while Battle Eraser and the festival in general are more social activities, Marron also tries to help the more introverted townspeople participate in a way that works for them. As an introvert myself, it made me happy to see that.

Once you’ve finished the content for the main portion of the game, you can also check out the prologue. It only takes about 15 minutes to complete, but it’s cute and sweet too, with similar messaging about helping people and accepting them as they are. (I applaud the writer(s) for the subtle aro-ace/queerplatonic (?) representation!)

Marron’s Day is just very wholesome. I loved the cheerful music, and was impressed that they had 13 songs on the soundtrack considering the shorter length of the game. The little critter characters are precious, and the graphic design reminded me of the Game Boy Color Pokémon games a little bit.

I appreciated the extras, which included a nice little manual, a music player, and also a gallery (with images that are unlocked by clicking on items in the house in the hidden area after completing the festival and continuing after the credits).

While this is a “bite-sized” game, I still found a lot to like about it. I did wish we had a little more time with the characters to flesh them out some more. Cream was a particularly amusing character, and her eyes really express her personality quite well. I wanted to hear more about the mischief Marron apparently gets into, according to Cream and others.

Anyways, if you enjoy short but sweet games and don’t mind scurrying back and forth to get things done, you might want to check out Marron’s Day. It’s cute, has great messaging, and I love the retro style. If any of this sounds good to you, “hop to it” and play as Marron the bunny. 🐰