Minami Lane is an adorable management game in which players are given control of a single street, the titular Minami Lane. They must run various businesses to attract tourists, manage the businesses’ menus, keep customers happy, and befriend adorable cats and tanuki (raccoon dogs) who also call the street their home. Minami Lane’s developers started with the goal of making a “tiny game” that is a complete, satisfying experience without becoming too large in scope. The management game, which has received extremely positive reviews since launch, has been praised for its pleasant aesthetics, intuitive gameplay, and plethora of cute animals.
Game Rant spoke with the team behind Minami Lane, France-based developer duo Doot and Blibloop. Doot, who previously released the tiny action game Froggy’s Battle, and Blibloop, who designed the art for Minami Lane, got their start in indie development doing Game Jams for fun and were inspired to make Minami Lane by that experience. The pair discussed what it’s like getting started as an indie developer, which games inspired Minami Lane, why they created a single-street management experience, and more. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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The Origins Of Minami Lane
Q: Where did the idea for Minami Lane come from? Did you start out knowing you wanted to make a management game, or did you decide to collaborate first, and the genre came later?
BLIBLOOP: Okay, where did it start? I think it’s a mix of several things, things we wanted to do and things we had experience with. We used to do a lot of game jams. We did a couple together—I think like five—and the last one we did was called Poda Wants a Statue. It’s similar in vibe: the same graphics, the same isometric style, and similar light management elements, I would say. And it worked pretty well! I think we were ranked 11th out of several hundred games, so I pushed to do a bigger game, starting from that, and that’s kind of where it started.
DOOT:Poda Wants A Statue was a Gam Jam game. It was one and a half years, almost two years ago. It was for the Ludum Dare Game Jam, and at the time, I was still working as a Gameplay Programmer in our studio, and Blibloop was doing her main activity, which is selling pins, illustrations, and stickers online. We did the Game Jam with a friend who is a composer. Zakku. He’s also the guy who worked on the music for Minami Lane, so the team was the same. And at the time, we weren’t really thinking about it. I mean, maybe we were thinking “Yes, someday we’ll make a bigger game.” And it was Blibloop who was like-
BLIBLOOP: “Let’s make a bigger game!” Because we always made three-day games. It was nice, but I wanted something more!
DOOT: And then, we had a lot of things going on with our lives. I started my new current position. I started being an indie game developer. I quit my job and went full time indie. I did my first game, Froggy’s Battle, and then I wanted to do a second one. Blibloop still had this idea, that she wanted to try to do a game together someday, but a bigger one. She was at a point in the project, in her pin shop, where she had a lot of work, and she wanted to do something else. Wanted something else to think about.
BLIBLOOP: My shop was working pretty well, and I ended up only packing orders, sending orders, and never drawing or doing illustrations. That was going on for quite a few months, so I kind of wanted to do something else just to take a break from it. Making a video game as an artist is making a lot of drawings. It was drawing 24/7. Well, we kept short working hours, but it was a lot of drawing.
Q: So once you had the idea to collaborate, what made you decide on a “tiny management game,” as you describe Minami Lane?
DOOT: Well, the short game comes from several aspects. The first one is that, for Blibloop, it’s not her main job. Her goal was not to become a game artist, so it was clear from the start of the project that this was a side project for her.
On my side, I’m still very much a beginner as a developer. I planned for my first years to be learning, completing trials, and doing a lot of different projects. By first years, I mean my first two years. I currently have financial aid in France because I have had jobs before. When you’re unemployed but you have worked before in France, you can get some financial help. My idea was, “Okay, I have this money, I can do whatever I want.” For the next two years, “whatever I want” is making video games, so let’s try and let’s do a lot of very small games to learn fast.
One thing about small games is that making games is hard, like really, really hard. Making small games is a bit easier. It’s still hard, but it’s easier, especially on the mental side – motivations and emotions and stuff. Because, well, you have to think of the curve of motivation for developers. At the beginning of the project, it’s high, and then it just crashes. Then, it’s really low for the entire project, and then it comes back at the end. Well, when you do a really small game, the crash is smaller. There are still sometimes when you’re like: Okay, this is never going to work. We’re never going to release it. It’s so bad. Why are we doing this? But, the game is really short, so it’s easier to get past that. Those are the main reasons why we did such a small scope.
BLIBLOOP: I kind of took the lead on the art direction and the creative vision. That’s just the kind of game I like. I like cozy games. I like management games, so I wanted to do something like that. I really wanted to do something in an isometric style, and I think management games fit this style specifically. That’s the main reason for me.
Inspirations Behind Minami Lane
Q: The cozy vibe definitely comes through. Are there any games that you feel directly inspired Minami Lane, whether in content, vibes, or art style?
BLIBLOOP: There were a lot of games that inspired us. I think at the very beginning, we made a big list of different games and what we liked about them. I would say that one of the main inspirations was Outlanders. It’s got light management, it’s very cozy. Another is Boba Simulator. It’s more of a “clicker” or “idle” type game, where you make more and more and more money. We didn’t want that, but we liked the management aspect of it. And for Doot, it was more Kairosoft Games.
DOOT: Yes, Kairosoft. They make a lot of mobile games that they then port to other consoles. It’s always light management games that last around, I don’t know, seven to ten hours, and cost something between $3 and $7. I really like small games, I play a lot of small games. Even though it’s not in the same genre, I love games by companies that are collectible, like Sokpop or Punkcake Delicieux, who are teams of people who do really tiny games very regularly. I love that kind of game. It was hard to reduce our inspiration to just a few games because our list was huge.
The interesting thing here was, when we started thinking about what we wanted to do, the first official pitch was “street management.” We had this vision of managing tiny streets. Before that, the idea was more of a traditional city builder, maybe a decoration game, or something like that. We had a lot of trouble getting to this tiny scope and tiny pitch, and then we said, “OK, maybe we cannot do this. Maybe we can’t do a city. And if we can’t do something like that, then why not a street?” That’s where it clicked. When you think of tiny, cute streets, you instantly have this vision in your head. When you think of tiny, cute streets, you instantly have this vision in your head. The pitch worked, so that’s why we went that way.
BLIBLOOP: I can add, for the visuals, I also had different inspirations, but it didn’t end up being like what I thought it would look like. I was really inspired by games like Eastward and A Space for the Unbound, so I was really going for this kind of anime-ish, Studio Ghibli style. But I think I didn’t really manage to have that style in it. It ended up being completely different, I would say – but it’s okay!
DOOT: It’s funny because our visual inspirations were either pixel art games or light 3D, like low-poly 3D. Like Islanders. Then, in the end, it’s neither of those. It’s something more unique. We had a lot of inspiration, but in the end, it was something unique.
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The Developers’ Journey
Q: Doot, how was the development process of Minami Lane different from your previous game, Froggy’s Battle?
DOOT: Well, the first thing, of course, is that the two of us were working on this game. That’s the first thing. The idea for Froggy’s Battl] was to make the game in three months, so I worked majorly long hours. Minami Lane, we wanted to do it in three months too, but it lasted six. A bit less than six, actually, because we had a break during the Christmas holidays, and we traveled to India.
It was two people, it was not the same kind of game, and it was also a game where I did fewer things, meaning that I did not do the art. When it comes to working together, I was actually scared of that at first, because I’d never made a game with someone else, except game jams. We had already worked together in game jams, so we knew that it could go well, at least for a short amount of time. Also, we’d been together for a while, had lived together, and knew each other well, so there were a lot of things that could go well.
But, as I said, making games is hard, so I knew there would be times when it wasn’t good. I knew there would be some tension, and that did happen. But, because I knew it would happen, we set up everything so that it could be resolved. We had daily meetings every morning where we talked about what we did and what we were going to do, of course, but we also talked about how we felt that day. “How I feel about myself, about you, about the game, about everything.” This was to make sure that nothing went unsaid. Nothing was put under the rug that could grow and explode someday.
I think it went pretty well, actually. The two times we had some tension, it was resolved both times. One was before Christmas, about three months into the game’s development. The first thing is, we don’t have the same way of thinking about game design. We knew that, and it’s interesting because it led to a very interesting game. There was one key difference: I love to remove stuff and Blibloop loves to add stuff. Around that time, I felt like Blibloop wanted to put too much into the game, and we’d already delayed the game twice. I was like: “No. Stop. We have to stop.” It felt, to her, like I was trying to stop her. To her, it was like I didn’t want to make a good game or like I didn’t want to do something good. We had to discuss a lot about this. We had to agree on things, to accept the other one’s thoughts and feelings.
The second time there was tension was actually after the launch. I think the reason why is that we were extremely tired. That’s normal, I guess, but it was weird. As I told you, I was a bit afraid that things would go wrong, but I expected it to go wrong during the game development, not after. Especially not after such a good launch. We had these really nice reviews and a lot of sales. Everything was going perfectly. There weren’t too many bugs, but we were really tired. So, there were still difficult moments, especially last week. We had to talk about how I didn’t want to hear about the game at all. I was like: “Oh, stop. We have to stop everything now. Maybe I’m just going to do another job.” Something extreme like that, and the opposite, Blibloop was more excited. “It’s going pretty well, and people are asking for things. I think we should do those things. And we should work more and more and more!” And at that moment, we were really tired. That’s why it happened, I think.
But all in all, I’m really happy, because I think we set up exactly what was needed to break those tensions and continue being happy together. That’s not easy, I think. Working together, it’s not easy. Especially making a game, making something that we put some of our personalities – a lot of ourselves – into. I’m happy that it went that way, but it was one thing that was really different from Froggy’s Battle.
Another thing was this game was a bit longer. Not a lot longer, but it had more things in it. It’s not my first game, so especially at the end, when the release approached, I was way calmer and could focus better. For Froggy’s Battle, I was absolutely panicked because, with every single task on my backlog, I didn’t know how much time it would take me. It could be ten minutes or it could be three days, and I had to do them all before the game released. I was really, really stressed, and this time, I was more able to say: “Okay, this will take this much time. I know I can do this.” I knew that I could add achievements to the game because I was sure that I knew how to do it. I could put in a save system and stuff like that. It was less stressful, especially towards the end of the game’s development.
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The Success of Minami Lane
Q: Does it help make the stress and tension better, that Minami Lane has gotten such a great response and so many positive reviews on Steam?
BLIBLOOP: It was unexpected! I actually didn’t realize we had made such a good game. I was surprised. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I thought if we had like 80% positive reviews on Steam, that would have been really nice. I was really surprised and really happy about it. And still – I know this is a little bit silly – but you still keep looking at the bad reviews, and it can affect you more than the good ones. But it’s also because it’s my first complete game, so I’m not really used to receiving a lot of reviews and feedback at the same time. And criticism, even if it’s justified – you spent six months on something, then you get all those reviews, and it’s kind of overwhelming sometimes.
DOOT: To add, most bigger studios, even when it’s only four or five people, have dedicated people to get and read all the feedback. Often, it’s people who have less emotional attachment to the game. It’s really hard to get feedback directly when you’re the one who put so much work into the game. Well, even in this case, a small game made in six months, we still did a lot. So yes, it’s hard even when it’s so good.
It’s because, as Blibloop said, the positive feedback, you just read it and be like: “Okay, great. It’s good.” Sometimes, it feels really, really good to read that, but the negative feedback sticks. This is like: “Okay. He’s right. This is bad. This is bad in our game, and we have to change it. Oh no, he’s right.” And I don’t know why we have such a big bias. Maybe it’s because we are still really tired from the launch.
I had gotten negative feedback before, on Froggy’s Battle. Then, it was like: “That’s it! I’m not going to be a game dev anymore!” Here, it was okay. It’s going to happen, and we expected worse. Really, we didn’t know. We just made the game as best we could, but we expected maybe 80, 85 percent positive rating on Steam, and we did way better than that.
BLIBLOOP: I don’t know if I even expected 80 percent. I hoped for it, thinking, “Oh, that would be great, for the first time we made a game.”
DOOT: It’s really hard when you’re inside of development – it’s really hard to know if something is good. We did a lot of playtests to make sure that we went in the right direction. But since we’re a small team, playtests were done with just a few people. We use playtests as a qualitative tool, not a quantitative one. We knew what worked and what didn’t work, and we tried to go in the right direction. But we never knew, like “This game is a 4.5 out of 5” or something like that. We didn’t have grades before launch before people played it and reviewed it on Steam.
Q: My favorite part of Minami Lane is all the cute cats who live on the street, that you can pet and interact with. Are any of them based on a real cat?
BLIBLOOP: Unfortunately, we don’t have a cat. We almost have a cat, because there’s this one cat in our neighborhood who always comes to our patio. It’s always sitting on the chairs, so we give it milk and stuff. The black cat in Minami Lane could be that one. I insisted a lot that we had to add cats to the game. Because it’s a street, and it’s cute, so cats!
DOOT: The cat mechanic came at the time when we had this tension three months into development. I was like, I don’t want to add anything more to the game. And she said “No, we need that” about the cats. She was right.
Looking Towards The Future
Q: So, what’s next for you guys? Will you be working more on Minami Lane, making a new game, taking a break, or what?
BLIBLOOP: I’m going back to my shop. I’m going to work on that for a few months, but I’m also going to work a little bit on improving the game and doing new stuff. Not more content – well, maybe not. We don’t know yet. But different things like localization, translations, and maybe more. We are thinking about a Switch port. Not necessarily more content, but more platforms and stuff like that. I also want to add a few things to make the game prettier – a few animations, maybe different backgrounds. These are things I didn’t have time to add before launch, so I’m still thinking about them.
DOOT: We are going to continue to add just a few things to the game and try to port it. We will also try to do some localization in Japanese, French, maybe Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages. That was not really planned, and we are doing that because the game is a success. We think that we have enough time now, and we want to do that because a lot of people are asking for it. But also, the game scope is tiny, and we want to keep it that way. We won’t keep working on Minami Lane and do DLCs and stuff like that in the new year. I think the idea is we want to do a complete version of Minami Lane with the few things that we couldn’t add before release, more languages, and a Switch port. And that should end around June.
BLIBLOOP: Well, the Switch port won’t be ready by June.
DOOT: No, but the work we have to do on our end to prepare for a Switch port, that will be done by June. I don’t know when it’s going to release – but some day. Making a Switch port, for us, is really complicated. We have to work with a partner, and that’s expensive. That’s why we didn’t plan it at first, and now that the game is a success, we can plan that. This summer, I think, I’m going to slowly think about my next project. I still want to continue making games – and making tiny games. I don’t know if we are going to work together. I’m not sure. I don’t think so, actually, on the next one.
BLIBLOOP: Probably not. I still need to think about everything. It was supposed to be a very short project, like three months, and it got much bigger than expected. It also made me think about what I want to do.
DOOT: Same for me. My plan was to just make more games for two years, and then, when I didn’t have any money, go back to a more traditional job. Maybe it’s going to work better than what I expected. I don’t know. We’ll see. We were so focused on Minami Lane that we didn’t think about the future at all for the last six months, and now, we still need some more time to rest. So, what are we going to do next? I think the big answer here is, “We don’t know.”
[END]
Minami Lane is currently available on Steam. Doot and Blibloop’s other tiny games are available on itch.io.