Inbento (Xbox Series X/S) Review

The feeling of satisfaction and of love when creating a lunch for your child should never be underestimated. Therefore, inbento puts players in the shoes of a mother who makes daily bento lunches for her child. Throughout the game, little scenes are interspersed between the levels showing the relationship between the characters growing and changing with time. It is somehow both melancholic and peaceful to experience.

Gameplay takes the form of a puzzler. Here, true to its mobile roots, players must slide, move, and swap blocks that represent various box fillings to recreate the bento shown in the UI. This begins very easy with single blocks to place but quickly introduces a host of inputs and block types to change up the action. This plays somewhat like a top-down perspective stacking game, where blocks placed on top of others become the dominant block, for example if there is salad and the player places fish on-top, that block is now fish. The learning curve isn't steep, but it does go much higher than expected. The originally swipe-y gameplay from the mobile experience has been expertly applied to the controller interface, making the gameplay extremely accessible and simple to understand.

Visually the UI and design are excellent. This title presents a very simple menu and game screen. Each set of levels is set in a collection, usually based around a game mechanic being introduced. These make navigation easy and visual. The levels themselves are very cute, there is a bank of blocks to be placed (all of which must be used) at the bottom, simple control commands shown on screen to ensure the player remembers what they can do and in the middle is a cute little bento box usually with a block or two pre-placed that the player needs to work around. It's just lovely and has a great colour scheme. The art style used in the in-between "story" moments is extremely adorable and akin to something from Beatrix Potter. Music adds to the presentation; it's slow and contemplative but happy, perfect for keeping the player engaged with this type of content. No real zingers but perfectly pitched.

Where inbento struggles is that every level sports the same presentation, bar some colour changing, so it can become a bit bogged down in a longer play session. This is especially true for repeat plays. It's a small bug bear but might be the killer for some players.