To relax, sometimes you just need some nice food or a puzzle to concentrate on to keep the rest of the world at bay. Well, at least, I need that. Developer Mimmox has taken those two ways to relax and created a calming puzzler called Umami, in which you put together food puzzles made of blocks of wood. There is no fail state or timer to worry about, it’s just you, the pieces, a reference picture, and a colourful set up in which to craft a masterpiece.
Each of the fifteen puzzles present in Umami has been crafted by Mimmox, with each one having an animal chef and decorative piece associated with it. The majority of levels have a collectible card hidden in the environment somewhere, which you can find by clicking on the items around you until you discover them. And when you complete a puzzle, you can touch the animal piece to set off some colourful sparks.
To get to that end point of completing a puzzle, you need to put it together. Much like in real life when you attempt a puzzle, you will find the pieces scattered in a completely random order with the only option being to try and get pieces to fit together while looking at the reference picture. Umami does have a reference picture for each puzzle, but it only shows the front and back full on, so not everything is given away for these 3D wooden food sculptures. Pieces can be rotated to be placed anywhere, but you want to find the right place. Once a piece is put in the right place in the correct way up it will shake and become unselectable. The bigger pieces are generally easier to place whereas the smaller pieces can look similar, and you may be trying to put those in a few different places before finally finding the correct slot.
Umami is a very colourful game and each puzzle looks fantastic with lots of details and great care taken to make sure the pieces fit properly. Each of the dishes has inspiration from real world recipes with a fanciful touch, and some of the puzzles reference different seasons and holidays, like Halloween and Christmas. Throughout, the soundtrack is smooth and calming adding to the relaxed atmosphere that the game is wanting to put across to you as the player.
I would say that Umami isn’t a game where you try to blast through all fifteen puzzles in one sitting. Instead, I recommend doing two or three puzzles at a time when you have a bit of free time, then go off and do something else. My overall playtime was approximately six hours, but spreading Umami’s puzzles out over a few days heightened the relaxation element of the game.
There was only one real issue I had while playing and that was puzzle pieces sometimes getting stuck in the wrong position until I could actually click them out, or a puzzle piece flying across the level if it definitely was not going to fit in a place. A gentle drop would have sufficed instead of seeing a piece fly off, breaking some of that relaxing immersion.
