Two days after returning house 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 wonderful spicy rooster to 7-Eleven’s life-altering egg salad sandos, comfort shops in Japan are unimaginable, 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 sneakers of school pupil 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 concept started as a “Summer time Venture,” which can be the working title for InKonbini, between two pals. Shen’s good friend was planning to maneuver to Argentina, giving them one final probability to work intently collectively, “so I provided him to attempt to make a sport within the span of 1 summer time.” At the moment, 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 additionally a bit unhappy,” like mixing the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai. Shen tells me Japanese tradition describes these combined 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 Nineteen Nineties konbini, and Shen obtained goosebumps the second this concept was born. These goosebumps might need additionally resulted from Shen remembering the brilliant and welcoming konbini of Shenmue, one in every of 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 may have the sort of gameplay you’d count on within the sneakers of a comfort retailer worker. However on the similar time, Nagai expects gamers to seek out pleasure (and lots of different feelings) within the meta-gameplay born out of the opposite component of working at a konbini: speaking to prospects.
“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 reminiscences.”
Makoto Kayakawa will solely spend one week working behind the counter, however Nagai thinks the brand new connections she beneficial properties 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.
Finally, Shen and Nagai hope gamers can acknowledge the facility 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 a giant revelation, although,” Shen provides. “It’s the journey that issues, not the vacation spot. We merely need gamers to be reminded that every 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 eternally.
This text initially appeared in Difficulty 366 of Sport Informer.
