Inari Preview

While dating simulators can sometimes feel like a bit of a grind, I do still enjoy them now and then. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Inari didn’t feel like a grind at all, despite having a lot of the same hallmarks as other dating games.

You return to your hometown, looking for a hidden treasure that your parents have told you about. While on the search, you stay with a childhood friend and her mum, and immediately reconnect with another one of your old friends who lives in the house next door. So, of course, you have to see if you can seduce one or more of them. Each one has an affinity gauge which requires more points for each level, with every interaction giving you a certain amount of points. You can also give one gift each day too, but those aren’t free.

Luckily enough, you can earn money at the local hotel, doing odd jobs which take the form of Wario Ware-esque timed mini-games. Pump up the pool inflatables, change some bedding, refill the coffee machine, etc, etc… However, you must complete them all if you want paying, and it can be between two and seven tasks. Since doing one task uses one AP point, and you have a maximum of three per portion of the day, it can take you over half the day to get your well-deserved cash. You can help your love interests with their household chores, but they are unpaid and not only is each task timed, but the time you’re given to complete as many tasks as possible is also limited.

Both things can be overcome if you buy some upgrades (they cost money), as well as some other things such as what kinds of fish you can catch. Once you unlock fishing, if you find yourself at a loose end, you can use your AP to catch some aquatic life. You also need some of them for cooking recipes or some missions that the ladies might give you, such as five seashells to make some food. Oh, and you can cook, as with almost everything, it’s one dish per AP, and you might need to buy, catch, or farm the ingredients (when you unlock the farming).

Yes, I did say you need seashells for food — but while that’s what the game says, it’s wrong. See, Inari is poorly translated from Korean. That’s the only negative thing that I have to say about this game, with “seashells” instead of clams, “I forgotten call to parents” being a complete sentence, and I don’t know what “Cooper liquid” is, but this game is absolutely convinced that it comes out of a penis. Typos, missing words, straight-up wrong words…

But let’s look at the sex for a sec. Once you’ve built up the affinity gauges sufficiently, you get to have a sexy scene with the lady in question. What I will sing the praises of Inari over is how realistic the scenes are, and the intimacy within those situations. Of course, it’s pornography, so it has an exaggerated element to it, but definitely not enough to make things unrealistic. Each character’s proportions are similarly realistic, no breasts the size of a kayak, no penises the length of zebra crossings…

The artwork, on the whole, is great, with most of the game presented in a cutesy art style (plus bonus nudity if you catch someone in the bath), and the sexy scenes are all in full anime style. There are some static scenes, but most of them are animated nicely. While one of the options is to put a mosaic blur over genitals, it doesn’t do much to mask what you’re seeing, so while it’s nice to see the feature, I do wonder why it’s there.

In the current build, the main story for Inari is unfinished and, honestly, a little disordered. For instance, at one point, you meet a fox spirit. Well, I met them several in-game days after they turned up on my bed and woke me, and my character was entirely nonplussed. The game is still in Early Access, so there is plenty of time to iron things out and complete the main story, but I figured that I would warn that this is still incomplete. Speaking of, there are also basically no tutorials, so if you’re going to the shop hoping that you’ll find some carrots, well, that won’t happen. You have to grow the carrots, once you work out where the fields are, then find out how to cook…

Inari is a good game that just lacks polish. That’s all there is to it, honestly, there’s plenty to do, the sexy scenes are great, the graphics are cute, and the voice acting is brilliant. I’m looking forward to more content updates and for when it leaves Early Access.