Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal Town

Shinnosuke Nohara sure is lucky—this five-year-old gets to hang out, worry free, in a new village away from home while his dad is on assignment to get good “soul food” in the hands of customers. Surrounded by family, good food, and infinite time to do as he so pleases, little “Shin-chan” finds himself a little busier once he gets introduced to the Coal Town—a strange, sectioned off but bustling town that only he and his dog know about. This is ‘Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal Town’, a laidback adventure game where players take on the role of the titular, timeless little kid as he explores, helps out both townspeople, and catches enough bugs and fish to empty out the local wildlife.

This game marks the second console Shin-chan game by developer h.a.n.d. Inc. and publisher Neos Corporation, who have found great success in their first entry ‘Shin-chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation’. These games are based on the long-running manga and animated children’s television series ‘Crayon Shin-chan’ which is largely about this little kid and his family as they go about their lives and sometimes talk about things that hit too close to home—before a fart joke kicks in.

The series is popular in Eurasia, not so much in the west where your kids are more likely to know about ‘Bluey’ or some Half-Life supporting character whose head is stuck in a toilet. But that obviously shouldn’t stop you from enjoying a well-rounded and fun adventure game, be it you or a family member. Shin-chan’s brutally honesty and I’ll be too: this one’s a great game.

Two Towns, One Shin-chan

Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is a straightforward 3D adventure game with a fixed camera system. You’ll primarily be spending your time walking around both Unbent Village in the Akita Prefecture and the off-the-grid Coal Town that Shin-chan is eventually beckoned to. Players will walk or run (with their butts out) as they collect all sorts of bugs, fish, plants, and other critters to build out their collection and to give to the townspeople when they find themselves in a pinch. Shinnosuke is a kind little boy and is more than happy to lend a hand to everyone and in turn, folks are happy to reward Shin-chan for his good deeds which in turn lets you help out more people with the additional resources and Japanese Yen that comes your way.

Now Shin-chan can’t just up and run as he pleases. Besides having to open up sectioned-off areas of both towns by proving his worth, he’s also got to contend with the fact that the day actually progresses. Yes, Shiro and the Coal Town has a day-night system that progresses as Shinnosuke moves from zone to zone. It is thankfully not time-based, but it does mean that you’ll have to watch your steps lest the day ends sooner than you’d like. Not that you’ll be punished for taking your time, that is the whole point of this game, but it can be annoying to be in the middle of something only to have to stop and go to sleep. And yes, I know Shin-chan’s a five-year-old but that’s not enough to stop me from being slightly miffed when his doting parents spawn in to tell him that dinner is ready.

Still, this system acts as a nice buffer between objectives in both towns. Each morning and evening, you’re greeted to beautifully drawn scenes of Unbent Village and the Nohara family coming together to eat and chat. It’s a nice sight and Shin-chan gets along quite well with his relatives even if he’s very honest about things. Again, this is a game about taking it easy and you’ll be encouraged to take missions and side stuffs on bit-by-bit.

So, Unbent Village is one part of the puzzle. This lush, beautiful little part of Akita contrasts heavily to the Coal Town that Shinnosuke gets to visit. See, when the family dog Shiro comes back all covered in soot one day, he runs off again and little Shin-chan follows him to a secluded little place in the far corner of the village. A few barks later, a train appears and takes both characters to a far-off world that is eternally covered in an evening sky. There Shin-chan meets Sumi, a young girl that has been waiting to meet the brutally honest Shinnosuke—because she believes he can help her save the town from what she thinks will fall to an impending doom.

Time spent in the Coal Town is the same as it is in the Unbent Village. Both villages share the same time system, but upon hitting the evening hours you’ll be swiftly teleported back to your humble abode and the game will skip to nighttime. Besides that, we’ve a few more things that can be done here. Shin-chan can help out the tech-handy young lady Yuri (whom Shin-chan is quite fond of) with repairing parts of the town and helping out the townsfolk with bespoke issues. This is done by finding the resources she’ll ask for and you can find those by simply running around town and picking up every shiny thing you see. Some items can be bought or traded with at the towns’ public board. The townspeople here are also a hungry bunch and they’ll ask for Shin-chan’s help to get those dishes they have fond memories of back down their chutes.

In the Coal Town, we also have trolly racing. This is a fun little minigame that pits Shinnosuke against some of the townsfolk as they race across a variety of maps filled with jumps and other dangers. Your goal here is to collect as many points as possible by picking up stones as you race across the track to the finish line. The finish line, however, only grants an additional 10 points. The rest have to be earned, and you’ll need to avoid losing points by watching your speed as you enter curves and/or watch for incoming attacks from your opponent. This is an enjoyable part of the game with small camera issues the first time around a course. Nothing you can’t anticipate quickly enough however, and it’s always easy to restart.

But getting back to resources for a minute, you’ll need a lot of things to progress through the game. Once you get control of Shinnosuke, you should ideally be catching and picking up just about everything sparkly that you see. Side quests will ask you to find new species all the time, or maybe specific vegetables that can be grown in the gardens in front of your house and later on in the mountains of Unbent Village. Though the game is all about taking your time, sometimes I found myself having to troll zones waiting for things to respawn just to continue the game. If it’s a vegetable that I need to progress, sometimes that meant I had to wait in-game days with not much else to do.

This has always been an issue with the genre and though it does become less of an issue over the course of the game, sometimes you can’t help but feel a bit restricted on what you can do until time passes.

Quiet, Precious Times

I’ve no idea how I’ve come this far without talking about the Nohara family and the rest of the cast, but I won’t forget to do so. Each character has something to bring to the table, be it Hiroshi Nohara’s reason for coming to Unbent Village and his parents being good role models to Shin-chan. We have the whole village and the little ones who get Shin-chan to explore their little hometown along with the many old folk who still live off the lay of the land. Over in Coal Town we have Sumi and the rest of the town with their antics and desires. Every character’s got their weakness, too, and the story does a great job making a good joke out of ’em. Oh and, this being a children’s media and all, there’s plenty of crude humour to go with it all.

Shinnosuke especially has a lot of moments misconstruing words unintentionally (or so I wonder), forcing characters to repeat what they just said in understanding or frustration. He’s a very forthcoming five-year-old, but this works out quite well for anyone trying to learn Japanese because this game features full “furigana” above every kanji in the game. Shin-chan’s antics to get characters to repeat sometimes difficult words works in your favour here as it is both humourous and a great learning experience.

And as I’ve mentioned before, this is all backdropped by beautiful visuals and a soothing score. Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal Town uses a mixture of fixed 3D camera angles, hand-drawn environments, and 3D models with baked-in shadows to paint a near-replica of what the anime looks like. It looks fantastic and as I played this game with my window open quite a bit (since we still have a warm breeze running about) I felt great pleasure taking in these views with a pleasant wind breezing against my neck.

Now from time to time, these production values were hindered by technical issues with this port. Mind, this is in no way a demanding game—heck, it’ll likely run on any old integrated graphics chip perfectly fine. Thing is, there are no real graphics settings to work with, no keyboard support as far as I could tell, and worse yet: the framerate runs at half of the monitor’s refresh rate. I primarily played this game on 120 plus hertz capable screens, but when I decided to load up the game on my ROG Ally and plugged it into my 60Hz telly set in the living room I was surprised to see the game run at 30 frames max. To add to this, the game did stutter and skip a bunch during specific cutscenes which really ruined moments in an otherwise gorgeous game.

Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal Town is a fantastic adventure game in that it is laid back, funny, and easy enough to be enjoyed by just about everyone be they child or senior. You might not know who Shin-chan is, but don’t let that stop you from taking it easy and looking up once in a while. ∎