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Inbento tips, cheats - How to master recipes and uncover hidden secrets

Tips for beginners and experts alike

Inbento tips, cheats - How to master recipes and uncover hidden secrets
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Afterburn's inbento is a polished, inventive, food-themed puzzler that sees you crafting dinky packed lunches inspired by bento cuisine. But don't let its cute art style and heartfelt story fool you; this one is no pushover when it comes to its brain-teasing puzzles.

Each puzzle presents you with a bento box, a cutting board full of different ingredients, and a recipe for you to create. Controls couldn't be easier – simply drag the food found at the bottom of your screen into the bento box to be arranged.

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There are currently over 120 puzzles to test your mettle on, and many of them are going to give you grief if you don't come well-prepared. Sure, inbento does a great job of easing you into the experience and teaching you the basics of solving its hand-crafted recipes, but it's still worth checking out these tips before you hit the late-game challenges.

The basics

You'll hopefully notice early on that it's only the top of the bento box that counts in the final recipe. This means you can cover up food you don't need if it's distracting you or getting in the way. That being said, it is imperative that you do not totally ignore ingredients that will later be required. Basically, if you only have three pieces of salmon in a puzzle, and the recipe solution demands all of them, that should give you a sizable hint as to the correct move order.

On a similar note, know that every bento box needs to be completely full to solve the puzzle. This means all ingredients available to you must eventually be used. Advanced mechanics allow you to remove unnecessary blocks and even create new food in the middle of a level. Smart use of these features will take you far.

Fixing mistakes

If you do happen to mess up, know that you can quickly tap the middle of the box in order to return the last piece back to the cutting board. And if you hold your finger on the screen after performing a quick undo, you'll automatically pick the same piece back up, allowing you to correct any dodgy moves.

Analysing recipe solutions

You may not have to rely on the undo options if you spend time analysing the recipe solution to suss out which ingredients need to be placed at the end of a level. Naturally, this helps you to deduce the best ingredients to place down first. Be warned, though, that this isn't something you'll be able to fall back on for the entirety of the game. The developers have purposefully designed some of the later puzzles to trick players relying on this tactic, which is just mean.

Don't worry if you're stuck

In the event of you becoming totally stuck on a puzzle, it's important to remember that you can opt to throw in the towel and skip the level entirely. Each of inbento's chapters consists of 9 recipes to solve. You'll only need to complete 7 out of 9 recipes to unlock the next chapter, essentially giving you 2 free skips to use at your leisure. Your frequent skipping will be reflected in an illustration viewable on the main menu, though.

Finding hidden secrets

This one is for players who have completed all the puzzles available to them. If your level counter appears to be showing an incorrect number, I would advise that you spend some time looking through the main menu…
And that's pretty much everything you need to know to become a master of Afterburn's inbento. If you're yet to give it a go, you'll find inbento available for purchase now from the App Store and Google Play. Remember that it's a premium title without any ads or IAPs