Years in the past, I visited Houtong Cat Village, a former coal mining city in Taiwan that has since been taken over by cats. The place is a cornucopia of feline residents: black cats loafing on parapets, white ones lazing on bike seats, and even an exhausted calico lounging on high of the city’s weathered mascot statue. Cat-themed cafes and kitty kitsch are plentiful, and you can’t stroll a couple of meters with out crouching to greet a sleepy tabby. Time appears to decelerate considerably there. But earlier than you understand it, the solar has set, the cats have retreated to the snuggest of nooks, and it’s time to depart.
Mineko’s Evening Market may be very a lot harking back to that coziness. For one factor, the sport is ready in an identical village, one centered round a cat creature of some type: a towering, rotund feline known as Nikko sporting a wood masks. Scenes from Mineko’s Evening Market harken again to previous Sunday cartoons, the hand-painted textures of the wood homes and outlets seemingly produced by layering paper cutouts atop each other. The residents are well mannered however reserved, apart from one blustering child who introduces himself as Bobo. As Mineko, a woman enamored with the folklore of the village, you grow to be quick associates with Bobo, mesh into the tightest of duos, and he pulls you into his quite a few exploits.
There’s additionally a myriad of small, enjoyable duties you may full at your leisure, corresponding to creating handicrafts, gathering assets, and petting as many cats as humanly attainable. Mineko’s Evening Market is a gradual, leisurely expertise that permits you to roll alongside at your personal tempo — one in which you’ll be able to whereas away many hours with out realizing how lengthy you’ve lingered.
![The stalls of the titular market open on Saturday night in Mineko’s Night Market](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/w0OhISFEqlezhI8UdGZxM22kYdc=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24959630/minekos_night_market_stalls.jpg)
Picture: Meowza Video games/Humble Bundle
A legendary story nudges this pastoral affair alongside. Bobo rapidly embroils you in a grand conspiracy round Nikko, which he believes has one thing to do with the presence of sharply dressed, shady-looking thugs who’ve trapped the island’s cats in tiny cages. Bobo sees himself as a strategist, however like most sidekicks, he’s a planner, not a doer. This implies it’s as much as you, as Mineko, to journey to numerous elements of the island to free these kittens by way of a sequence of stealth minigames, the place you’ll have to sidestep the thugs’ imaginative and prescient cones to keep away from detection. Then there’s the village itself; as soon as a bustling vacationer attraction earlier than your arrival, it has deteriorated to a considerably dilapidated state, its eponymous night time market largely vacant and lifeless. Desperate to inject extra exercise (and earnings) again into the scene, its organizer asks you to arrange a sales space to promote your handmade crafts and different odds and ends.
Whereas a lot of Mineko’s Evening Market is cozy and languid, early chunks of it border on laborious — it begins at a gradual, heavy gait. A lot of the island is locked away, and you may solely go to sure areas when you’ve got sufficient funds to buy particular instruments. And with solely a scant few assets to collect on the village, your solely technique of incomes money is by frantically plucking as many flowers as you may to make bouquets to promote on the night time market, which solely takes place on Saturdays. Furthermore, the cat-rescue stealth minigames can get stale rapidly, on condition that they aren’t significantly difficult.
![A statue of the legendary cat Niko in the center of a copse of trees in Mineko’s Night Market](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tUIVNmqCri_elzPf6vNe8X8buDI=/0x0:1920x1080/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1920x1080):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24959634/minekos_night_market_niko_statue.jpg)
Picture: Meowza Video games/Humble Bundle
However when you recover from the preliminary lull and achieve entry to extra of the island’s corners, Mineko’s Evening Market ramps up considerably, with an almost dizzying quantity of actions to pursue. Extra areas yield extra assets to reap, with which you’ll be able to craft extra objects. Neighbors will ask you for favors, and in change, they’ll grant you new crafting recipes. You possibly can invite new, pleasant retailers to arrange store on the village. You possibly can go fishing because the seasons change and new flora and fish seem. Because the city will get livelier, once-abandoned museums reopen, encouraging you to show an assortment of meals, flowers, and gems.
For all of its ancillary pastimes, Mineko’s Evening Market really springs to life on in-game Saturdays, the fruits of all of your exhausting work over the week. On the titular bazaar, you may promote your items to haggling prospects, go to different cubicles, impulsively buy pleasant snacks and plush toys, and take part within the occasion’s festivities, from cat racing to stay performances. When the occasion concludes, I trudge again residence within the quiet of the night time, desperate to dive again into the zen-like routines of chores and pastoral work in subsequent days.
Admittedly, there are days the place it seems like friendship on this quaint little city is conditional, an odd feeling that everybody desires one thing from you: 10 items of paper for fixing a flimsy wall, two matcha lattes for a thirsty neighbor, a sports activities drink for an aspiring athlete. At one level, a vendor even jokingly requests 120 blocks of wooden to construct their retailer — a joke available at your expense. However in case you can shelve these uncomfortable ideas, Mineko’s Evening Market could be a place to linger for a couple of hours. Be it chipping away at your laundry listing of mundane however comforting chores or promoting some handmade kitty kitsch on the night time market, this cozy sim is an invite to decelerate and scent the roses. Or relatively, pet the cats, as they flop over in contentment, their purrs resonating from deep inside their bellies.
Mineko’s Evening Market was launched on Sept. 26 on Mac, Nintendo Change, PlayStation 5, and Home windows PC. The sport was reviewed on PC utilizing a pre-release obtain code offered by Humble Bundle. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. Yow will discover extra details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.