Here’s another unusual mobile game from Japan that sort of fits in the genre of ‘disgustingly cute’, like Battle Cats or Nameco. In fact Fermented Soybeans Factory, or Natto Koubou as it’s called in Japanese, looks like it’s trying to replicate many aspects the highly successful Nameco franchise from Bandai Namco, with the little brown beans sort of resembling Nameco mushrooms, and the pulling up motion much like Bandai’s.

It’s hard to believe that anyone made a game about natto, Japan’s famously bad-tasting fermented beans [1]. But that’s exactly what game developer Qooga has done.

Players are challenged with pulling out the bad beans and pushing down the good ones, all within the given 30 second time limit. If you do it well enough, you’ll make it to the next level, and hopefully collect some rare natto characters on the way.

If you’d like to see how it works, check my brief demo above. It’s really tricky to target the right beans when the spring up so fast. So while it’s certainly a casual title, it has a bit of a furious pace for the brief time that you play it.

If you’d like to try it out for yourself, it’s available as a free download for iOS or Android.

Thanks to Axel Games for pointing out this one.