Bobara is one of those idle games where you are waiting around and then are delighted when something happens. In Bobara, there is a tiny capybara called Momo who is hanging out inside a Japanese water bath. It's warm there, and he seems cosy.
The app itself tracks your local weather. When it was windy outside, I saw the trees change and whistle away. When it rains, it rains in the game as well. It's a nice touch, seeing the weather change! Beyond that, you can tap various bits of the screen. Momo will give you a few phrases about what they are like and what is happening around him.
You can also change a boba tea at the bottom of the app, which you are meant to do when you have that same tea in real life. There isn't a way for the game to verify this, and instead you can just change it. These sort of lure different creatures or items to Momo, which are held inside your tea house.
Some of the trinkets are food like pretzels and milk bread. They don't appear around Momo. Characters like Cha and Yuki hang out with Momo, and you can tap them as well. Other than that, Bobara doesn't have much else going on. There is no real goal beyond hoping that you end up collecting everything else that the game has to offer. You can use Siri to speak to the app and change your boba via voice command, if you want to put the app on your Apple Watch, which is a nice touch.
At the same time, there just wasn't a lot to keep me interested. I wish that I could interact with my trinkets and could move them about a house or decorate in some way. But, the game is more of a collection and a pet.
Jupiter Hadley
Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, and judges many jams and events. You can find her on Twitter as @Jupiter_Hadley