I’ve been a big fan of Tamagotchi since I was a kid. I even still have all of my original Tamagotchi’s lying around my house, even though these days most of them are in varying stages of deceased. These digital pets have been having a bit of a comeback with the releases of newer, smaller Tamagotchi models and the announcement of tie-in games like Tamagotchi Plaza.

The gameplay loop of the traditional digital pet is addictive and very comprehensible, but it is always interesting to see the franchise branch out and find ways to use the Tamagotchi characters in more traditional games that don’t revolve around needing to feed them every five minutes. There is a lot of love out there for the designs of many of the Tamagotchi characters, and it could be great to have a new way to see them walking around in a 3D environment.

Most of the minigames have as much substance as something that you could find online in intellectual property theft games for toddlers that fill the likes of Girlsgogames these days. While they are visually appealing and the bleepy-bloopy noises that represent the characters’ voices are very cute, the minigames themselves struggle to be engaging in any meaningful way. They are also often very poorly tutorialised, which is surprising given the target age demographic for the game. At the manga shop, for example, you will be asked to create a manga page such as ‘Kuchipatchi’s beach magic’ where you need to select the correct images to meet this criteria. The issue is that you might have no idea which Tamagotchi Kuchipatchi is, and you also might not know which object represents magic within the selection. It results in an odd bit of trial and error.

Tamagotchi Plaza also suffers from not allowing the use of the Nintendo Switch’s touch screen, instead forcing players to scroll through menus and navigate with a slow-moving cursor while trying to play the games. These sorts of minigames are usually made with either a mouse or touchscreen in mind, as they mostly involve dragging things around the screen that just doesn’t feel as snappy when controlled with a joystick.

There is also a small Plaza area outside of the stores that can be explored in between shifts at the various shops. It’s very relaxing to walk around in, and various characters can be encountered while outside. Sometimes they lounge around in the park or line up for shops; there are even very small side quests that the characters will offer while you’re out and about. I do wish the world felt a little more reactive, though, while there are upgrades to make to the plaza, the first few are very minimal. The game also lacks a day/night cycle or any sort of weather system, which can leave it feeling very static.