We never expected to have to do it impart lessons of life and existence from a turnip and by his fellows. And in fact it is not exactly what is offered to us by Minabo – A Walk Through Lifethe new indie title by DevilishGames coming April 28 to PC and consoles, but something like that. Just starting from its birth underground and its first stages of sprouting, our turnip leads us into different stages of his life, and in different missions with variable objectives to achieve, to show us how our behavior can have even fatal impacts on others. Let’s see together what we saw during our test on Nintendo Switch of this new indie title!
Minabo – A Walk Through Life, being a turnip head even in a video game
Minabo – A Walk Through Life is a more anxious indie title than it might seem. We lived the various missions with anxiety and tension much higher than we could imagine. And you’ll soon find out why. We start from the beginning, with players having to grow their own turnip and experience its entire life cycle, from start to finish, interacting with other turnips and the ever-changing surroundings.
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We are called to bond with our parents and get to know other turnips, make friends with them and even begin a love story, until the birth of a new family. With pets included. As our turnip life progresses though, we’ll have to make difficult decisions regarding our social interactions. Marry a turnip and have kids, or stay single and take care of our parents? Is it really an exclusive and non-inclusive choice? We’ll talk more about that shortly.
Minabo, which is also the default name of our turnip, is a pure and harsh metaphor for life, where we have 4 indicator bars of our values available. The first three concern Physical Contact, Confidence and Hospitalitywhile the fourth is ours Life expectation, which varies according to how other values behave and in relation to how we relate to others. And what better object, if not one mela that we find random along the way, to lengthen life expectancy?
The transience of life in all its forms
In addition to this, as time passes and hopefully we lengthen our life, whose years are indicated above the bars, we can also observe the alternation of the seasons and the phases of existence. Each of these corresponds to a different behavior both of our protagonist and of the other turnips, with a more or less rapid scrolling of the values in our bars depending on our behavior and the age reached.
It all happens trying to complete a total of 25 missions, full of life-changing moments, and also landing in the Free Life mode only after completing the first 4 missions and being able to change our path again, as well as being able share our story on social media as well. However, there are also factors that we have not particularly appreciated, both technical and in terms of content. Let’s start right from the first ones, where we can’t save our progress while on a mission, and the risk that it becomes long enough exists.
For this reason we risk losing the progress made in the game, if we do not wait for the end of each level, which provides not only the achievement of the objectives set, but also other secondary progress. And the hardest aspect to accept was having to witness the systematic death of turnips that we don’t pay enough attention to.
How a turnip is born and dies
Grow your own turnip e experiencing the circle of life is one of the most incredibly moving and hard things to swallow that we could imagine. And if with “The circle of life” you have in mind the song from the soundtrack of The Lion King, well, you already have your handkerchief ready. Just like it happens in our real life, even our turnip will experience the refusal to attention and physical contact from the beginning that he will seek with his fellow men.
And it will also happen with our parents, who will not always be ready and willing to accept our attentions and requests. Even trying to strike up a love relationship won’t be easy, as it requires holding the hand of another turnip (and we won’t tell you anything about the birth of turnips, but don’t expect unpublished botany lessons!) and stay on the same line of wave is not always an easy undertaking to complete.
Developer:
DevilishGames
Price:
0
Seeing other turnips increasingly weak and detached from us will lead them to a very sad end of life. That is, their fall to the ground and the consequent appearance of a tombstone. Our reaction could be of three different types, same options that we will have available in the face of a refusal: sadness, indifference, anger. It’s up to us to alternate reactions and choose how to carry on with our existence, between crying, some existential doubts and a healthy gesture of the umbrella to those who refuse us.
We will really be free to choose only in Vita Libera, the option that allows us to experience a little more without being tied to the objectives imposed by the game. All this takes place within a game since 2D side-scrolling gameplay, without particular plot twists and complex settings to be able to select. It always remains a simple title in its concept and in its mechanics, with few commands to learn to achieve the various missions. We have not encountered any particular technical impediments and a good smooth loading by game engine at various stages of the gameplay.
Minabo’s review – A walk through life in pills
Minabo – A walk through life is an indie title that made us think on several occasions. It is a deceptively simple life simulator and not in an open world version as we might imagine, but it is still a good compromise thanks to easy mechanics to learn quickly and objectives to be achieved in a not too immediate way, indeed sometimes perhaps a little too long. The missions are many and they alternate quite well, however the core of the gameplay can be quite redundant as you progress through the game. Overall, it is a title that we recommend and that has some good performance on Nintendo Switch, so you can cry in despair at the loss of a turnip, or simply send them to hell if they refuse you. Without too many consequences in real life.