Since I was too old, and yet my kids were too young, when they came out, it was pretty well impossible not to be exposed to and made familiar with the phenomenon that was Tamagotchi. Having spent a fair amount of time enjoying Nintendogs, and a variety of other simpler and more complex virtual pet games over the years (anyone else remember Creatures?!?), I absolutely do understand the fascination, and given the fact that they could be carried in your pocket certainly made Tamagotchi very accessible. Now, a few decades later, we thankfully don’t just have an attempt to modernize that classic, we instead have a friendly and generally accessible mini game collection wrapped in a horde of cute characters, and an attempt to win your town the honor of hosting Tamagotchi Fest!

Clocking in with a whopping total of 15 (only 12 if you have the Switch version, the 3 extras make use of the mouse controls) different mini games, it will take you some time simply to walk around the town and get a chance to try them all out. Ranging from serving afternoon tea, to working with a dentist, to repairing bikes, and quite a lot more, the good news is that most of these games have their own style of play to them, for better or worse. In all cases they’ll start out relatively simply, minimizing the amount of detail or complexity you’ll need to be responsible for, letting you get acclimated rather than piling on the difficulty too quickly. Once you’ve been consistently successful, you’ll then get to prove you’re ready for more, and then an opportunity to expand your store, incrementally increasing the degree of challenge.

Unfortunately, there is a bit of a flaw in this formula, especially if you were considering it to be a home run for your gamers in training. First, on a general level, how to play the mini games isn’t really explained. You’ll get information at the bottom of the screen for the buttons to press, and with a little time older gamers will likely work out how to be successful, but more casual or less experienced gamers could possibly find this frustrating and require some help to get them going. The second problem is that while many of the games involve pattern matching or time management tasks of some kind, and what you need to do is very clear, there are some like the tea shop where the rules behind the scenes can be aggravatingly obtuse. You can sort of stumble your way to success at times, throwing anything that seems to be related onto the table in hope of success, but sometimes it can feel like the more you think about it and try the worse you can actually do. There’s also a certain lack of direction in general to the game from the moment you walk out the door. Depending on the player this could be great, letting you simply explore and work out what you’re supposed to be doing on your own, but again less experienced players could struggle with the lack of help to get going.

In general, this is absolutely a title geared towards more casually-minded gamers who enjoy things like classic time management games, cooking games, or things in that vein. There are absolutely some genuinely weird variations here I can’t say I’ve ever run into before, with the dentist one coming to mind first, pulling weird little creatures out of people’s teeth. It’s really those sparks of originality and fun that captured my interest. I do wish that, being a more seasoned gamer, getting my shop upgrades didn’t take so much repetition, just so the mini games would get a bit tougher and more enjoyable, but I also know that I’m not the target audience. If there were more instructions available, whether in the form of a tutorial or in-game direction, I think my score would have been a little higher, as that would really help make this a more ideal title for junior gamers of all ages. Figuring out some of the mechanics to the mini games took a leap of faith at times, and to stay in that more casual lane it would be nice for the game to be more sensitive to that potential issue, addressing it more properly.