Developer Doot announced on November 11th the shopping district management simulation game “Minami Lane‘ was officially announced. The compatible platform is PC (Steam), and it is scheduled to be released in January 2024.
“Minami Lane” is a simulation game in which players create and manage a shopping street along a road in a certain city. The worldview is influenced by Japan, and the atmosphere is said to be relaxed and enjoyable. Also, it seems that the shopping street will gradually expand, but judging from the screenshots, it seems that the work will be quite compact in scale.
Advertisement
In this game, players build a store on land facing the road, attract customers, and earn money. In addition to stores, you can also build houses, parks, etc. When housing is built, the number of people increases in shopping streets, and parks contribute to the beauty of the scenery. There is a status called beauty in this work, which affects the satisfaction level of the people who visit the shopping district. It appears that the landscape will be improved not only by parks, but also by certain stores.
Stores that can be constructed include convenience stores and ramen shops, and the color of the building and the shape of the roof can be customized. Depending on the type of store, certain conditions are set not only on construction costs, but also on the number of people visiting the shopping district and their satisfaction level. For example, if you build a ramen shop, you set the recipe for the amount of noodles, chashu, and boiled eggs to be served in the ramen that you want to serve to customers, and set the selling price.
Customers who visit the shopping district express their impressions while walking, so it is possible to find out whether they are satisfied with the shopping street or whether they have any complaints. For example, if you say, “I wish the ramen had a little more noodles,” you’ll probably be satisfied the next time if you increase the amount of noodles in the recipe. However, increasing material costs will put pressure on profits. At the end of the day, you can check the sales at each store as well as customer satisfaction with the price, so it would be a good idea to use that as a reference to adjust the sales price.
Each store can be upgraded by paying money. At that time, you can choose whether to increase profitability or improve your beauty status as mentioned above. Customers also comment on the scenery of the shopping street. It is up to the player to decide whether to respond by upgrading stores, constructing new parks, etc., or what kind of shopping district they want to develop.
Advertisement
On the other hand, in this work, several goals are presented from time to time, and achieving them is one of the goals. For example, you can earn a specified amount of money in a day, or make a specified number of customers over a certain level of satisfaction. Also, random events will occur as you play.
The developer of this work, Doot, is a studio that received high praise for its work on the roguelike action game “Froggy’s Battle”, in which a frog is the main character. This work, “Minami Lane,” was co-developed with artist Doriane Randria, also known as blibloop, and the warm visual style of this work seems to be the work of Randria.
“Minami Lane” is available on PC (Steam) is scheduled to be distributed in January 2024.