Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town review – Simple fun

Between long RPGs and open world adventures, I like to settle down with one or two smaller games. Be it an hour long indie game or a relaxing farming game, there’s usually something out there for me.

Enter Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town, which brings a breezy adventure with simple objectives that’s the perfect way to spend a few weekends.

Heading to the countryside

Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town sees Shinnosuke heading to the countryside in Akita Prefecture thanks to his father’s work. Here, he spends endless days catching fish and bugs, helping out the local kids, and even sets off on his own adventures in a mysterious town.

You don’t need to know anything about Shin Chan or the previous games (though you can buy this in a bundle with Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation on Steam.) Everything is setup to give you the minimal required context, and most of your time is spent interacting with new characters anyway.

To start with, your only real goals are to learn the basics of what you’ll be doing for the next 10-15 hours. Shin-chan quickly gains access to a net that can be used to catch the various bugs around Akita, and a rod for fish (you can also eventually start catching other aquatic critters.)

Filling up your notebook with new catches is simple enough since you don’t have to worry about things like seasons, and the main aim is more to catch specific ones for requests. If you’re a completion, it’s also possible to aim for “crown” versions of critters, though this is up to RNG.

Filling in the general gameplay loop in Akita are crops. Shinnosuke’s grandmother teaches him how to grow crops outside the house, with more unlocking as you progress. You gain access to more land and even sprinklers to speed up watering, though like everything else it’s designed to be as simple as possible.

A mysterious town

After a short while in Akita, you wake up to Chin-chan’s dog Shiro covered in soot. Leading him to what seems like an abandoned railway line, a strange train appears whisking Shinnosuke away to the titular Coal Town.

The strange dreamlike Coal Town is where most of the main narrative takes place, as you craft various inventions to help the town’s residents. Once again, this mostly just involves collecting various things (this time random scrap and other everyday items.)

In town, you also gain access to a few other pastimes. Shin-Chan ends up helping a failing diner by attracting new customers, while also working with the owner to come up with new dishes. These dishes require items from Akita, giving you more of a reason to collect as much as possible each day — Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town features no time limits, so you’re not forced to constantly gather if you don’t want to.

Eventually, you can also make use of trollies to race through different tracks in Coal Town. As you’d expect these are designed to be quite easy to complete, though there are a few customisation options if you find the later races to be too tough.

Charming visuals

Rounding out Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town‘s chill vibes are the visuals, with most areas making use of hand-drawn backgrounds. They blend well with the game’s charming 3D character models, though you might notice some resolution issues on PC — the port is pretty basic, and everything is designed around the Switch so no 4k here.

Honestly, it’s just a really nice game to look at. I especially like how Coal Town is handled, with its weird geometry and colour palette adding to the dream-like theme. As an added bonus, it also means that performance on handheld PCs is rock solid.

Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town Review – Final Thoughts

Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is a simple game to both explain and play. Collect items, complete requests, have fun. It’s incredibly relaxing and doesn’t outstay its welcome — well, unless you plan on going for every achievement. With how much I enjoyed this, I’m definitely planing on checking out Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation some time soon!

---

Shin chan: Shiro and the Coal Town was reviewed on PC using a code provided by the publisher.

^{Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on them. This is at no additional cost to you and helps support Rice Digital!}