Inbento
Summary
Inbento is a chilled brain teaser game where the player is confronted with increasingly difficult challenges which involve arranging a traditional bento (lunch) box into a specified pattern with the provided number of moves. It is charming and pleasing but can become dull.
My experiences with the game
This is going to be short and sweet. The game is charming and aesthetically pleasing. It looks good and it feels good to play. There is a very satisfying thuk sound when the successfully completed bento box is closed and moved away. There is a cute story that you unlock with the bento boxes of a mother cat bringing up her kitten to then take care of her own kitten when they gets older. It is very cute, but during the game feels incidental.
The navigation is also well thought through, with a skeumorphic recipe book design.
This game is sweet and the puzzles are good. It’s been well thought through and beautifully made. The puzzles actually get really challenging. I bought it whilst I wanted to do something with my hands whilst listening to an audiobook, and now I am at the later levels (probably from about 8 onwards) the puzzles take me a bit longer and are a bit more frustrating. It’s still using a different part of my brain than the audio book, so even when it’s been a fiendish puzzle it’s still nice doing both. Without the stimulation of an audiobook or my own music (the in game music is sweet but not special) there isn’t enough content to the game to keep me engaged, the puzzles are the same concept over and over. The variations in what you can do to edit the bento box are quick to assimilate so don’t require high levels of attention. It’s a very casual game and some people will like that, but it’s not for me.
Score
Cooperative N/A
Story 2/10 (it’s sweet but so tangential to the actual game)
Fun 4/10