The Nerdy Type

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a soft spot for jigsaw puzzles. I can still remember my first, precious Bambi jigsaw that I completed hundreds of times as a child, despite the pieces that went missing over the years. As I got older and discovered gaming, that soft spot evolved into an obsession with jigsaw puzzle games. 

UMAMI is one such game, developed by Mimmox Games, and it’s enough to have me completely obsessed. Not only does it include challenging 3D puzzles to complete, but all of them follow the same theme: foods combined with animals that look both good enough to eat and impossibly adorable. 

I might be a beaver

I’ve never had even the tiniest, passing urge to chow down on a piece of wood, but UMAMI has me questioning whether I may have been a beaver in a past life.

In short, UMAMI challenges you to rebuild the outer layer of wooden puzzles, all of which depict food, and each food-based puzzle is also connected to a specific animal. For instance, there’s a delicious-looking burger with a cat between the layers, a cake topped with a unicorn, and a stack of matcha pancakes with a bamboo chomping panda at the very top. 

It’s impossible not to get hungry while you play, and equally impossible not to love the various animals in each level. Side note, you can pet the animals, something that I did not realize until I’d already completed the demo for the first time and was informed by the developers that I must immediately play again and boop the snoots. 

I have since been forgiven for my discrepancy. 

Hidden secrets and surprising difficulty

While you’re diving in and building the wooden puzzles, it can be easy to ignore or forget about the table on which these puzzles sit. However, all of the food around the table can be interacted with, and you might just find the secret hidden cards around each scene. These little pieces of artwork feel like virtual trading cards, and I can’t wait to fill out my album when the full game releases. 

UMAMI is not as easy as it first appears. Of course, there’s the challenge of figuring out where each wooden chunk attaches to the puzzle core, which increases in difficulty as you progress. However, this is somewhat remedied by opening the hint window, which gives a full preview of both the front and back of the puzzle that you’re currently working on. 

Finding the pieces themselves can prove difficult at times, too. With each puzzle having a different theme that also applies to the background on which you’re working, the pieces can sometimes blend into the background setting. That could be a ‘me’ specific problem, because I’m easily distracted by cute things, but it is something that I noticed. 

Relaxing in every way

Despite the inherent difficulty offered by these 3D wooden jigsaws, UMAMI is impossibly relaxing to play. It’s the perfect zone-out gameplay experience that should probably be avoided if you don’t want to slump down in your chair and forget that you have other things that need doing. It’s great at the end of a long and hard day of work, or if you’re just looking for something to occupy your mind without having to stress out too much. 

There are no time limits in UMAMI, and everything is set to a backdrop of lo-fi beats that seem to help the brain slow down and think more clearly. The most stressful thing you’ll encounter while playing UMAMI is the possibility of putting a piece in the wrong slot, but nothing is permanent until a piece clicks into its rightful location, so you don’t need to worry. 

Even the UI is incredibly clutter-free, with only a hint button and a settings button available to press while you’re constructing your animal-themed food items. The focus is very much on the hand-painted art, with hardly anything to distract you from that, and that’s soothing, especially if your mind is usually filled with thoughts and noise.

If you’re looking for something to help relax your mind or if you just love the satisfying feeling of completing puzzles, then a UMAMI demo is available to download right now. The full game is set to be released in Winter 2025.