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, typically) adventures days prior. From Lawson’s wonderful spicy hen to 7-Eleven’s life-altering egg salad sandos, comfort shops in Japan are unbelievable, as unusual as that’s to put in writing. 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 footwear 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 marvel hidden behind the day by day routine of a konbini employee. The thought started as a “Summer time Undertaking,” which can also be the working title for InKonbini, between two buddies. Shen’s buddy was planning to maneuver to Argentina, giving them one final likelihood to work intently collectively, “so I provided him to try to make a sport within the span of 1 summer season.” Right now, Nagai has eight full-time workers and some others engaged on the sport.
Shen says their conversations led them to develop one thing “lovely and comfy, with a optimistic temper, but in addition 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 may be translated as “the unhappy fantastic thing about mundane issues.” After a number of iterations, Nagai landed on the Nineties konbini, and Shen bought goosebumps the second this concept was born. These goosebumps may need additionally resulted from Shen remembering the intense and welcoming konbini of Shenmue, one among his all-time favourite video games (Nagai Industries is the cover-up title for a Yakuza group in one of many sport’s areas).
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 could have the sort of gameplay you’d count on within the footwear 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 component of working at a konbini: speaking to clients.
“The sport is being constructed round a conventional Japanese idea of ‘ichi-go, ichi-e,’ which interprets to ‘one time, one assembly,’” Shen tells me. “No state of affairs in our life may 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 aspects and the tales she hears will resonate with gamers. Nonetheless, don’t count on a mystery-driven plot or investigative narrative – InKonbini is concerning 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 primary takeaway wouldn’t be a giant 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 Subject 366 of Recreation Informer.