INARI (2023)

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INARI is a student hack&slash game about a fox beating up cats. Got through story mode and took the train in under an hour before getting bored. There's not much to this game. You're an inari and you go through 2d Japanese sets slashing your way through neko, kappa, and more. There are a handful of bosses around. And there are a ton of achievements. Honestly wish there was more, like a storyline to go with the mindless hacking and slashing. Or more music. I did enjoy what I played, though. And it's Freeeeee..... Do I recommend INARI? If you're bored and like beating up yokai

"INARI" is a student project from Columbia College in Chicago, which is apparently an educational institution that teaches the students wrong, on purpose. If I was a game development trainer, I guess one of the first things I'd teach students is that 2D gaming became obsolete in the mid 1990's when consumer 3D graphics cards like the Voodoo3 and ATI Rage became mainstream. So, we have a badly made 2D side scroller in the 3D era of gaming, preparing the students for absolutely nothing related to modern, professional game development. What do you do in the game? You slash things, you run around and do platformer stuff... there's little to no narrative and little to no interest for gamers, which is reflected in the way this student project failed to attract any significant interest from gamers. The 2D graphics were a major reason for this failing. Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs and the latest 3D graphics cards to play 2D games. Even mobile phones and game consoles can do 3D graphics now. There's no excuse. Insultingly, the developer insists that you should play this with a console peasant children's toy gamepad instead of KB+M. Developers should try t…

"No stories, purely for the scenes but this game was very indulging" a review from a friend who misunderstood which Inari game I was playing loll but it is true xD casual game to pass time

Pretty solid action platformer hack and slasher. Looks okay, has controller support, ran well enough. Didn't have deep settings options but did run okayish? It is short and pretty easy. Leveling is necessary to be able to not get one shotted by the final boss. Game is also free and only an hour long. So it's is mostly a recommend but I did have some slight design complaints: 1) There's no way to comfortably dash out of an attack to avoid the lightning or an enemy attack. You're kinda stuck with certain moves having long recovery frames. 2) I can't get past 60 FPS on this but that might be an issue with Windows 11 being terrible with a recent update. 3) Shielded enemies show up and disappear after like 2 stages which seems weird. 4) No secrets stages or easter eggs. Still this was a fan project and the art sound design and other aspects are pretty solid.

INARI is a game that's easy to pick up, doesn't overstay its welcome, and has really enjoyable gameplay. Zooming around as a ninja was fun, especially after maxing out my upgrades. I've only played through the story mode so far, which was light on the actual story in-game. That's okay though, since the game both doesn't really need one and does a good job of telling it just through what's going on in the environment (village is burning and being destroyed, evil spirits are running around). There's another game mode to check out as well, which looks like it might be the more in-depth one (as I can see items and stuff that aren't in the story mode in some of the screenshots). A fun game, and for an unbeatable price!