NOOK FALL: West Town Review – Ordinary Corner Store Life

Have you ever thought about what working in a corner store would be like? Serving customers while getting to know the community and discovering something about life may not come to mind. NOOK FALL: West Town is a relaxing visual novel with that exact premise, where you spend 16 days working a job at a local corner store. Developed by NarraTruth Games and published by GCORES PUBLISHING, you get to see life in a different way.

You are a temporary worker for a corner store in the titular West Town to help out your uncle. They give you a place to stay and a monetary allowance to buy what you need. It’s your first time in West Town and you know nothing about the area. Thankfully, you quickly make a few friends who teach you the basics of your job. Eventually, you get the chance to explore the town as the days go by.

Running the corner store isn’t difficult, in fact it’s nearly impossible to fail. You listen to what people ask for, then bring it from your store. My biggest challenge was learning where everything was located since you aren’t told there are categories or greater selections to choose from. Once I got comfortable with a few orders, it was easy to figure out how everything worked. If I ever messed up, customers would repeat their order.

Thankfully the game’s true potential isn’t in your work but the interactions with your customers. You meet a variety of individuals as the days go by and they have unique views about the world they live in. Listening to them, offering your own perspective, or helping with tasks lets you learn more about a person. While each person speaks about West Town from their perspective, you could easily apply the same speech to the real world.

I liked the introspective thinking that each perspective would bring. After listening to someone talk, I would always think about how true their words were. Some were a bit fantastical like a fortune-teller’s speech to get you to draw fortunes, but there was one chat from two men about how stores are closing down more frequently that stuck with me; I could think of several real-life examples where stores closed and impacted communities. Those moments really made me think about how easy it was to forget the other side of a story.

While you meet customers through your job, you also get full access to the town on the occasional day off and can travel through West Town via tram rides that take you to different sections. Some individuals and some stores are only available at certain times, which incentivizes you to explore different parts of town to see the conversations you might encounter. You can also buy some items for your apartment like plants or vinyl records that add a personalized touch.

Even though the game describes itself as a visual novel, you move around areas by clicking on transition points. NOOK FALL uses isometric projection to display its buildings and it’s great to see the landscape shift as you move around. I enjoyed seeing a building come into view or a person who wasn’t there the previous day, it actually felt like I was traveling around in the town itself.

However, moving around was frustrating for me since it involved lots of clicking. There also aren’t any maps for individual sections and you must memorize locations on your own. If you travel to the wrong area, you must make your way back. You don’t get that many days off to explore and practice going to locations. This results in lots of clicking that hurt my finger and made me stop playing to take a break.

There are also some noticeable errors I encountered while playing. If you aren’t playing in Mandarin Chinese, some English grammar errors like misspelled words occasionally pop up. Visual descriptions for store items sometimes don’t disappear until you do a full restart. I also encountered a situation at the Observatory where I had to buy a cable car ticket twice. The game didn’t recognize my first purchase since I accidentally clicked away from the ticket booth. While not gamebreaking, it is hard to ignore after a while.

NOOK FALL: West Town gives you several encounters that make you reflect on how people live their lives, these situations are ordinary but make you consider the impact of the community you work in. However, moving around involves lots of clicking and the occasional grammar issue is hard to ignore. But it’s more involved than a typical visual novel, which is a nice payoff if you can deal with the flaws.

Victor reviewed NOOK FALL: West Town on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.