InKONBINI promises to be ultimate “comfort game” as creator pushes for something new

A cozy week in Japan

While on the surface, there’s plenty of appeal in running your own convenience store in a quaint Japanese town, one of the “biggest fears” of Shen is that prospective players don’t look beyond that. The ‘simulation’ part of the experience is secondary to the storytelling, as they explained to us.

Makoto, the game’s protagonist, serves more as an avatar than a defined character. Shen offered Mass Effect’s Commander Shepard as an example, someone the player can define along the course of the journey. Instead of focusing on Makoto’s backstory and her motivations, the game is more about seemingly insignificant interactions with customers. Holding conversations with them, learning of their troubles or pleasures, and then moving on.

In life, we cannot control “big events that happen around us,” as the game’s creator stressed. “We control small things, and by paying attention to them, it makes our lives better. We become better human beings.”

Don’t be mistaken, however, there is still a great deal to interact with in a gameplay sense. In fact, “the most challenging part of the last year was creating all the packages,” Shen said with a laugh.

With over 200 unique items in the game, they all required their own designs to come to life on the shelves of the store. Given interacting with these items if the core function of inKONBINI, they had to be richly detailed and thus, devs have taken considerable time getting it just right, even if it meant starting over once or twice.

It’s through these items, which Shen even considers to be “characters” in their own right, that the game truly comes alive. “One of the innovations of inKONBINI is we implemented this organizational gameplay and connected it with branching dialogue with the characters.

“Customers react to changes in the environment and that triggers certain types of dialogue you could miss if you place objects in different positions. When speaking to them, you realize even those small things matter.”

When stacking shelves, this means it’s essential to consider where particular items are placed, as well as how they’re presented. Some customers may like your choices, others may have some feedback. All of it helps open up the real purpose of the game, to engage with others and connect on a meaningful level, if that connection is fleeting.

Striving for the pinnacle of comfort

Overall, the hope is to instill a sense of calm and joy, not stress and concern. You can’t ‘fail’ so to speak, and running your Aunt’s convenience store isn’t a hugely demanding process. What’s most important is feeling snug in the environment, a feeling Nagai Industries has been working tirelessly to capture.

“I saw this famous convenience store, a Lawson in front of Mount Fuji. I was like ‘Yes! This is the place.’ When I think about going there, I feel good.” It’s that feeling inKONBINI hopes to replicate for players around the globe.

One idea Shen kept coming back to during our conversation was the idea of ‘mono no aware.’ This Japanese concept is often used to define an awareness of life’s impermanence, that everything we experience is here and gone in a flash. Like with the changing of the seasons, there’s a certain beauty and even comfort in being mindful of this very fact.

“There’s nothing permanent in life. I wanted to capture that atmosphere which I’ve only encountered in Japanese media.”

Listing the likes of Studio Ghibli’s Only Yesterday, to Netflix’s Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories, along with newer products in the gaming industry like Coffee Talk and Unpacking, these inspirations all helped find the framework of what inKONBINI is ultimately trying to become.