When you say something puts you to sleep, it’s usually A) not true and B) not very nice. Bandai Namco’s Tamagotchi Plaza literally put me to sleep, and it was the best thing that’s happened to me in almost two weeks.
For a few weeks at the start of every summer and winter, without fail, I go through a period where I can’t fall asleep — or, if I do, I only stay conked out for a few hours. Reading doesn’t help. The words just bounce off my brain and leave no impression. Playing games occasionally calms my buzzing mind, though the burden of having more Things To Do often just makes it worse. This time, I thought Death Stranding 2 and its methodical, almost meditative trek across a (mostly) quiet wasteland might do the trick, but on the night I tried it, I ended up in a story sequence that desperately needed content warning tags about graphic self-harm, among other heavy topics. I didn’t sleep that night.
Fast forward to the weekend. Still unable to sleep, I decided to try Tamagotchi Plaza, a new game that Bandai Namco released for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on June 27. It’s a gentle management game where the king of the Tamagotchi – who knew the little critters were monarchists? – wants the town to host this year’s Tamagotchi Fest. The prince thinks you look like a nice sort of person, so you’re in charge of getting a dozen shops set up and in a state fit enough to serve visitors. “In charge” means getting an assistant to do most of the work, while you check in occasionally and help customers via completing mini-games.
These games range from drilling a Tamagotchi’s rancid teeth at the dentist’s office to piecing together an outfit following a customer’s detailed guidelines and helping at the gym in little rhythm-based activities that wouldn’t be out of place in a tamer WarioWare collection. They’re basic and controlled enough to never feel like a burden, but with just enough space between “doing a good job” and “ruining a Tamagotchi’s day” that you need to pay attention.
Not that the price you pay for making a mistake is even noticeable. If you really mess up, the customer leaves “unhappy,” and you just have to help more customers before you can upgrade a shop.
Playing a series of minigames that stay engaging while maintaining low stakes convinced my brain to chill out, to stop speeding through 5,000 things at once, and after, about 40 minutes, to fall (and stay!) asleep. I did it again the next night, helping Tamagotchi solve their problems and upgrading the town square, and I feel like I”m closer to something that resembles a conventional human being now.
I don’t expect Tamagotchi Plaza to compete with the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Death Stranding 2 for 2025’s Game of the Year. Heck, low stakes and little reason to feel attached or committed mean it likely won’t linger in the cultural consensus long enough to even count as one of the best family games. However, in a landscape where even cozy games make increasingly heavy demands on you to spend more time, find more things, and meet more milestones, it’s hard to overstate just how nice it is for a game to invite you in and just do chill little things until you don’t want to anymore. So thank you, Bandai Namco, for putting me to sleep.
