When I first caught a glimpse of inKonbini: One Store. Many Stories at Day of the Devs during GDC last year, it was a game I had to get my hands on. Unfortunately, as I kept zigzagging around the venue hoping to get a turn, its demo station was constantly in use, and I never got to play it. Thankfully a demo was available as part of Steam Next Fest, and even though it was super short, I’m already sold even though it stressed me the hell out.
In inKonbini, you play as a college student named Makoto who’s looking after her aunt’s small town konbini (convenience store) while she’s away. In the Steam Next Fest demo, you’re on your last shift alone before going back to school. The demo begins with a little bit of a reflective narrative, common in anime-inspired slice-of-life stories, before giving you control.
This demo only gives you this one shift, and it doesn’t take long at all. You’re tasked with taking stock out of the back and putting it on the konbini sales floor, making sure everything at the store is in order, and then opening up shop. Simple, right? Oh, if you only knew.
With a shop this small, you can’t possibly screw anything up, right? Right?
At the start, Makoto is having a conversation with her aunt who tells her that she’ll get through this shift easily, but if she runs into any problems, Makoto could call her. Cool, whatever. I used this opportunity to explore the back of house and examine some stuff, because that’s how I do with walking simulators. I found a postcard with a phone number on it, but despite the fact that I felt I was thorough in my exploration, I couldn’t find the phone to call this mystery number. Anyway, I started keeping track of what was in the stock room.
On the back shelves I found a good amount of soda, a bunch of beer, bowls of ramen, and cups of ramen. I took all the soda, and found an empty spot in the refrigerated drinks section to put them all there. I didn’t notice alcohol anywhere in the store, so I ended up leaving that in the stock room thinking that we weren’t allowed to sell alcohol at that hour or something. When I came to the ramen shelf, I laid out all the bowls and realized I still had the cups to deal with, but I couldn’t find the right place on the shelf to put them. That led to my first dilemma.
Should I only put the bowls out? Should I take out two rows of bowls and put those cups of ramen in? I had no idea. It doesn’t help that I didn’t know if there was a difference in cost either. With that lack of information, I just put the bowls back in the stock room.
Gotta love inspecting soft drinks.
From there, I felt like the store was good and reluctantly opened up shop. An elderly man came in. We chit-chatted, and he was a little strange, yet comforting. He seemed like a warm fella, but he also didn’t want the aunt to know he was there. Weird, but I let him do his thing. You can do whatever you want from here, and that’s where I started to get anxiety (in a cozy game).
The old dude was laughing because he claimed it was the first time he saw bread in a refrigerated section. Well, there goes my first screw up. I had all these beers in the back, when I could’ve taken the bread from the fridge, put them in the bread section, and then bought the cold ones out. I quickly tried to fix that situation, but all of a sudden he had a question about ramen. Yeah, it looked like he wanted the cups, but because I fat fingered the A button (on Steam Deck) through the dialog, I ended up accidentally convincing him to take one of the bowls instead. He seemed chill about it, so it was all good, and I tried to go back to adding beers to the fridge.
Before I could finish, he needed help in the pet food section, saying was looking for a certain kind of cat food with specific nutrients, and unfortunately his vision wasn’t good enough to read out the differences on the shelf. This required me to look closely at the shelves myself and examine each canned product to see if it had what he was talking about. Luckily I found it, but before I could go back to fix my realized issues, it was time for him to check out. I really wanted to finish what I was doing, but the customer comes first right? Especially when it’s time for him to pay.
I… don’t know how Japanese money works.
So when I rang him up, of course I had to deal with Japanese currency, and I don’t know how the coins worked. The worst part was I owed him 40 yen in change, and I don’t know what coin was what, and I gave him like eight nikkeru (Japanese nickels, according to Google?) instead of coins that could’ve been in higher denominations because once you pick a coin, you can’t go back. I gave him the right amount but still felt like an idiot.
Before leaving for good, he stood outside for a bit, said a little something and the demo was over.
This demo was really something. I didn’t think I could write more than 1,000 words about an experience that only took like 20 minutes, but here we are. As someone who’s a bit of a perfectionist and also spent five years in fashion retail, I can’t help but feel like I could’ve done better. But does any of that actually matter? Did I actually mess up? I want to play the demo again and see if doing anything differently changes anything, but you know what? I’m gonna wait until the game comes out in April on PC, Mac (nice), Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Switch. I’m hoping this is an easy Platinum too–well, as long as I don’t eff it all up again.
This demo only gives you this one shift, and it doesn’t take long at all. You’re tasked with taking stock out of the back and putting it on the konbini sales floor, making sure everything at the store is in order, and then opening up shop. Simple, right? Oh, if you only knew.
When I first caught a glimpse of inKonbini: One Store. Many Stories at Day of the Devs during GDC last year, it was a game I had to get my hands on. Unfortunately, as I kept zigzagging around the venue hoping to get a turn, its demo station was constantly in use, and I never got to play it. Thankfully a demo was available as part of Steam Next Fest, and even though it was super short, I’m already sold even though it stressed me the hell out.
In inKonbini, you play as a college student named Makoto who’s looking after her aunt’s small town konbini (convenience store) while she’s away. In the Steam Next Fest demo, you’re on your last shift alone before going back to school. The demo begins with a little bit of a reflective narrative, common in anime-inspired slice-of-life stories, before giving you control.
This demo only gives you this one shift, and it doesn’t take long at all. You’re tasked with taking stock out of the back and putting it on the konbini sales floor, making sure everything at the store is in order, and then opening up shop. Simple, right? Oh, if you only knew.
With a shop this small, you can’t possibly screw anything up, right? Right?
At the start, Makoto is having a conversation with her aunt who tells her that she’ll get through this shift easily, but if she runs into any problems, Makoto could call her. Cool, whatever. I used this opportunity to explore the back of house and examine some stuff, because that’s how I do with walking simulators. I found a postcard with a phone number on it, but despite the fact that I felt I was thorough in my exploration, I couldn’t find the phone to call this mystery number. Anyway, I started keeping track of what was in the stock room.
On the back shelves I found a good amount of soda, a bunch of beer, bowls of ramen, and cups of ramen. I took all the soda, and found an empty spot in the refrigerated drinks section to put them all there. I didn’t notice alcohol anywhere in the store, so I ended up leaving that in the stock room thinking that we weren’t allowed to sell alcohol at that hour or something. When I came to the ramen shelf, I laid out all the bowls and realized I still had the cups to deal with, but I couldn’t find the right place on the shelf to put them. That led to my first dilemma.
Should I only put the bowls out? Should I take out two rows of bowls and put those cups of ramen in? I had no idea. It doesn’t help that I didn’t know if there was a difference in cost either. With that lack of information, I just put the bowls back in the stock room.
Gotta love inspecting soft drinks.
From there, I felt like the store was good and reluctantly opened up shop. An elderly man came in. We chit-chatted, and he was a little strange, yet comforting. He seemed like a warm fella, but he also didn’t want the aunt to know he was there. Weird, but I let him do his thing. You can do whatever you want from here, and that’s where I started to get anxiety (in a cozy game).
The old dude was laughing because he claimed it was the first time he saw bread in a refrigerated section. Well, there goes my first screw up. I had all these beers in the back, when I could’ve taken the bread from the fridge, put them in the bread section, and then bought the cold ones out. I quickly tried to fix that situation, but all of a sudden he had a question about ramen. Yeah, it looked like he wanted the cups, but because I fat fingered the A button (on Steam Deck) through the dialog, I ended up accidentally convincing him to take one of the bowls instead. He seemed chill about it, so it was all good, and I tried to go back to adding beers to the fridge.
Before I could finish, he needed help in the pet food section, saying was looking for a certain kind of cat food with specific nutrients, and unfortunately his vision wasn’t good enough to read out the differences on the shelf. This required me to look closely at the shelves myself and examine each canned product to see if it had what he was talking about. Luckily I found it, but before I could go back to fix my realized issues, it was time for him to check out. I really wanted to finish what I was doing, but the customer comes first right? Especially when it’s time for him to pay.
I… don’t know how Japanese money works.
So when I rang him up, of course I had to deal with Japanese currency, and I don’t know how the coins worked. The worst part was I owed him 40 yen in change, and I don’t know what coin was what, and I gave him like eight nikkeru (Japanese nickels, according to Google?) instead of coins that could’ve been in higher denominations because once you pick a coin, you can’t go back. I gave him the right amount but still felt like an idiot.
Before leaving for good, he stood outside for a bit, said a little something and the demo was over.
This demo was really something. I didn’t think I could write more than 1,000 words about an experience that only took like 20 minutes, but here we are. As someone who’s a bit of a perfectionist and also spent five years in fashion retail, I can’t help but feel like I could’ve done better. But does any of that actually matter? Did I actually mess up? I want to play the demo again and see if doing anything differently changes anything, but you know what? I’m gonna wait until the game comes out in April on PC, Mac (nice), Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and Switch. I’m hoping this is an easy Platinum too–well, as long as I don’t eff it all up again.
by Danreb Victorio
