Two days after returning dwelling from my trip in Japan, Tokyo-based developer Nagai Industries Inc. launched a trailer for its upcoming journey sport, InKonbini: One Retailer. Many Tales, and I used to be instantly taken again to my comfort retailer (“konbini” is Japanese for comfort shops, usually) adventures days prior. From Lawson’s glorious spicy rooster to 7-Eleven’s life-altering egg salad sandos, comfort shops in Japan are unbelievable, as unusual as that’s to write down. InKonbini is a ’90s love letter to the konbinis of Japan, and after talking with Nagai Industries founder Dima Shen about InKonbini, I couldn’t be extra offered.
InKonbini places gamers within the sneakers of faculty scholar Makoto Hayakawa, who’s taking a break from her research to assist her aunt run a small-town konbini. Nagai describes the sport, due out on undetermined consoles and PC in 2025, as a “meditative narrative journey/simulation sport,” the place, whereas enjoying, you uncover the enjoyment and surprise hidden behind the each day routine of a konbini employee. The thought started as a “Summer season Mission,” which can be the working title for InKonbini, between two mates. Shen’s buddy was planning to maneuver to Argentina, giving them one final probability to work intently collectively, “so I provided him to try to make a sport within the span of 1 summer season.” At this time, Nagai has eight full-time staff and some others engaged on the sport.
Shen says their conversations led them to develop one thing “lovely and comfortable, with a constructive temper, but additionally a bit unhappy,” like mixing the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai. Shen tells me Japanese tradition describes these blended sentiments as mono-no-aware, which will be translated as “the unhappy great thing about mundane issues.” After a number of iterations, Nagai landed on the Nineteen Nineties konbini, and Shen obtained goosebumps the second this concept was born. These goosebumps may need additionally resulted from Shen remembering the brilliant and welcoming konbini of Shenmue, considered one of his all-time favourite video games (Nagai Industries is the cover-up title for a Yakuza group in one of many sport’s places).
Shen says Nagai goals to problem and confront the notion {that a} developer can’t convert this occupation right into a significant and thrilling gameplay expertise. The sport’s trailer signifies InKonbini may have the sort of gameplay you’d anticipate within the sneakers of a comfort retailer worker. However on the similar time, Nagai expects gamers to search out pleasure (and plenty of different feelings) within the meta-gameplay born out of the opposite factor of working at a konbini: speaking to prospects.
“The sport is being constructed round a standard Japanese idea of ‘ichi-go, ichi-e,’ which interprets to ‘one time, one assembly,’” Shen tells me. “No scenario in our life will be repeated; we by no means get to expertise the identical factor twice, and that’s what brings nostalgic taste to a few of our recollections.”
Makoto Kayakawa will solely spend one week working behind the counter, however Nagai thinks the brand new connections she positive factors and the tales she hears will resonate with gamers. Nonetheless, don’t anticipate a mystery-driven plot or investigative narrative – InKonbini is in regards to the pleasure of the seemingly mundane, though there’s a connecting throughline.
In the end, Shen and Nagai hope gamers can acknowledge the ability of slowing down in an in any other case fast-paced world, with Makoto Hayakawa standing in for us.
“The principle takeaway wouldn’t be an enormous revelation, although,” Shen provides. “It’s the journey that issues, not the vacation spot. We merely need gamers to be reminded that each one the moments of our life are fleeting, and even the issues we get used to, like a comfort retailer across the nook, received’t be right here ceaselessly.
This text initially appeared in Challenge 366 of Sport Informer.