Boredom on a night shift has led people to do a lot of questionable things, but downloading a dating app on a whim rarely results in getting matched with three women in one sitting. That’s the exact spark that sets this whole story moving, and TALESshop, the same studio behind Miracle Snack Shop, builds a charming, if mechanically rough, romance around it.
The setup is disarmingly simple. Family circumstances push the protagonist into a part-time job running a convenience store, and one slow, uneventful shift leads him to install an app called Some Some out of pure boredom. The moment he activates it, he’s matched with three very different women: Soohee Pyeon, an unassuming coworker with more going on beneath her quiet exterior than she initially lets on, Adela Prohaska, a foreign trainee chasing a singing career while clearly working through something she’s not eager to talk about, and Yena Bang, a bodyguard-for-hire whose sharp, prickly attitude toward the protagonist reads less like genuine hostility and more like a defense mechanism the story takes its time unpacking.
TALESSHOP Co., Ltd. developed and published the original release on Steam on January 14, 2020 alongside Smilegate, with a Nintendo Switch version following through publisher CFK after a delay pushed it into 2023.
That last detail matters, because none of the three heroines stay locked into their surface-level archetype for long. Soohee’s route peels back her “innocent part-timer” framing into something more layered and specific to her circumstances. Adela’s storyline uses her singing ambitions as a real throughline rather than set dressing, giving her route actual stakes tied to a goal beyond the romance itself. Yena’s tsundere-coded introduction gets recontextualized as the game reveals what’s actually driving her guardedness, and the reveal lands with more sincerity than the archetype usually earns. Across all three, the writing shows a clear instinct for giving each heroine a reason to exist beyond being one of three options on a menu.
There’s a nice bit of shared-universe texture tying this game back to TALESshop’s own catalog too. A copy of Miracle Snack Shop turns up as an in-game item in Soohee’s own room, and a tarot reading spot the protagonist calls up for advice during Adela’s storyline is the same shop where Seolhwa and Philia once sat down for a reading in that earlier game, right down to Philia herself making a cameo appearance elsewhere in the story.
Where the game runs into real trouble is its interlocking management sim layer. Running the convenience store, restocking, promotions, layout decisions, is baked directly into the core loop, and the mini-games attached to that system, along with a separate gift-giving mechanic for each heroine, are mandatory to progress the story even though they add essentially nothing back into it. Player performance in these mini-games doesn’t meaningfully shift character outcomes or story content, which makes the whole layer feel like an obstacle standing between you and the writing rather than a system worth engaging with on its own merits. Events themselves can only be viewed once per in-game week too, a pacing restriction that compounds the frustration once a route’s mini-game grind starts to feel repetitive. It’s a real drag on pacing, especially once the routes hit their stride and every returning trip back to store management duty starts to feel like a chore.
The interface doesn’t do the experience any favors either. Basic quality-of-life features that most visual novels take for granted, a functional skip function, adjustable text auto-speed, the ability to jump back to a specific point in the backlog, aren’t really present here in any robust form, which makes replaying routes or double-checking earlier scenes more of a hassle than it needs to be. For a game built around three distinct romance paths that practically invite replay, that’s a real oversight.
What keeps the whole thing worth pushing through those rough edges is the strength of the central relationships once you’re actually in a scene with one of the heroines. The Korean voice cast for all three women carries real range, Mi Jang’s performance as Adela in particular extending into a vocal track she performs in character for the Adela After Story DLC, giving Yena’s brittleness, Adela’s guardedness, and Soohee’s quiet warmth distinct emotional textures that come through clearly even without the protagonist himself being voiced. Visually, character art stays consistent and expressive across the cast, and while the range of unique CGs is on the modest side, what’s there is used at the right moments rather than spread thin trying to cover every scene.
Each heroine also received a separate epilogue release after the base game’s launch, Adela’s arriving May 29, 2020, Yena’s that October, and Soohee’s the following March, each running roughly as long as her original route in the base game and each adding new costumes, backgrounds, and character art on top of the fresh story content. It’s worth knowing going in that these exist as add-on content rather than being baked into the core release. Worth mentioning briefly and without dwelling on it: the game includes adult content options on top of its main romance routes, along with a soundtrack release for anyone who wants the score on its own.
Verdict
Some Some Convenience Store pairs a well-written trio of romance routes with a management sim layer that actively works against the story it’s attached to, forcing players through shallow, consequence-free mini-games just to keep the narrative moving. Soohee, Adela, and Yena all get more depth than their initial archetypes promise, and a strong Korean voice cast sells that growth convincingly, but thin quality-of-life features and mandatory busywork keep this from being the smooth, replay-friendly experience its three-heroine structure clearly wants to be.
