Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 3 First Look

Previous Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop games have centered on efforts to bolster the TamaTown economy by attracting more patrons to locally owned businesses through simple yet charming minigame play. Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 3 continues this civic-improvement theme with new shops, new games, and new items. We recently took a look at a demo for Corner Shop 3 and have the latest on TamaTown's urban renewal.

Rejuvenating TamaTown would be impossible without a Tamagotchi friend along for the ride, and the game starts out with one of four Tamagotchi friends plummeting from the sky into the TamaTown park. Depending on your preference, you can choose to ignore it and wait for a different one to come along, but the difference between them is purely cosmetic. Once you've set your friend up in the clock tower, it's off to the town to earn some money so you can make your friend a bit more comfortable.

There are 13 new shops in TamaTown, including a greeting-card store, a day spa, a decoration store, a party-planning business, a gardening center, an ice-cream parlor, a bakery, a treasure-hunting outfit, a piano studio, a recycling center, and a day care for baby TamaTown residents. Rounding out the list are two combo shops: a decoration day spa and a bakery gardening center. Each shop has a unique minigame that you can play to attract more customers and earn more money. For instance, the piano store features a rhythm game that requires you to tap different sections of the piano along with a musical piece, and the ice-cream parlor challenges you to make a tall soft-serve cone and decorate it with toppings. As you successfully complete rounds of each game, the store will level up through four increasingly difficult stages. Once you've earned a chunk of change, it's off to the park to take a break and hang out with your Tamagotchi friend.

The park contains only a few objects to begin with, but you can spice it up by buying food, flowers, benches, and more. Once planted, flowers will grow and blossom and make the park a nicer place to visit. Adjacent to the park is the clock tower, where you can buy new outfits for your Tamagotchi to try on. There are plenty of outfits to try, and you can also send items or notes to friends over Wi-Fi.

Tamagotchi Connection: Corner Shop 3 appears to be sticking to the formula that made previous iterations of the series charming and likable. The delightful visual style remains the same, and fans of lighthearted casual gameplay will likely find something to enjoy when the game ships in June.