I absolutely adore a great minigame in my video games. For long RPGs in particular, minigames can be a way to dramatically enhance the experience. When you are going to put 50+ hours into a game (and sometimes way more than that), it can become a grind, and breaks are good. A minigame can put you into an entirely new video game that is enjoyable, but then also leave you refreshed and ready to jump back into the main experience when the time comes.
Enter Dondoko Island, the Animal Crossing-esuqe minigame from Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I have not completed it yet, but I’ve logged roughly 10 hours and have leveled up my resort to 3 stars out of 5. There have been some great minigames over the years. The Yakuza series is famous for its mini games in particular, but I’m not sure I have ever poured this much time into one. And now, as I reflect on it, this just might be the greatest minigame of all time and a big reason to play Infinite Wealth.
There are many “cozy” games out there that try and replicate the Animal Crossing formula, but Dondoko Island takes it to the next level with one of the most constantly rewarding gameplay loops I’ve seen for a game in this genre. Simply, everything you do feels rewarding, and often in more ways than one.
Clearing out trash on Dondoko Island doesn’t simply clean up the island. It also gives you materials, which are needed to build up the island with decorations and attractions. Each bug on the island can be “maxed out” in rank as you catch them, and as you rank up your bugs, your resort’s popularity rank goes up, which is also needed to level up the island. You can also sell the bugs for money, which helps you in a myriad of ways. The same concept goes for fishing, and as someone who doesn’t particularly care for most fishing minigames, I really liked this one! (I guess you could say fishing is a minigame within a minigame here).
The game constantly has you making strategic decisions with your money, too. You can use it to improve your house, which helps improve your HP for the battles that take place in the game. You can improve your fishing spear and bug net with it. And of course, money is needed for extra decorations and for leveling up your resort as well.
With everything feeling like an accomplishment, you are constantly getting that dopamine hit as you play. And since this is designed to be about a 20 hour experience to complete, it also leads to a much faster pace than a game like Animal Crossing, which always starts to drag for me after a few dozen hours. I view it as the perfect length and pacing for a game like this.
And to top it off, improving your resort can lead to receiving a lot of money in the main game, which you can then use on better weapons and armor. Infinite Wealth doesn’t gatekeep the best equipment, you can buy it all just about immediately, so spending a few hours on Dondoko Island, and then having enough money to massively improve your armor is incredibly rewarding. All the good feelings that come from upgrading your resort get sent to another level when it also helps you in the main game.
And that is the thing that makes me wonder if Dondoko Island is the greatest minigame of all time. Not only have I spent more time with it than any minigame that I can recall, it is also having tangible benefits for me in the main game, which even many of the best minigames don’t always do.
I do have nitpicks. There is a farming element that is incredibly passive and feels oddly disconnected from everything else you do. In order to max out resort guests happiness, you have to interact with them with greetings and gifts every day, which is incredibly tedious when you start having 7+ guests (I started just accepting that I probably won’t max out their happiness most visits). I also think it is pretty hard with the tools they give you to really make an appealing looking town or house. I feel like I’m just dropping stuff down wherever, and that it would take way too much work to actually make it all look good. There are also some annoying inventory management elements, which is especially funny because the main game does not force you to deal with this at all.
It all adds up to a not perfect experience, but then you take a step back and realize, this is a damn game within a game, and if they had sold this for $15 on its own, I’d tell you it is worth it. Outside of Gwent and Geometry Wars, I’m not sure a minigame has ever made me feel that way. I’ll need more time to play and think about where Dondoko Island ranks for the best minigames of all time, but don’t be shocked if it ends up being #1. For the flaws it has, it is everything I want in a minigame, and it mostly executes all of it incredibly well
Big Nerd Gaming 
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