From the look and immediate feel of Space Cowboys' Inori we were immediately reminded of Chakra (Blam!), which we featured on Board's Eye View back in 2020. There's some mumbo jumbo about spirits, altars and a sacred tree, and that certainly informs Suzanne Demontrond's beautiful artwork, but once you've settled down to play Inori, you'll forget the theme and realise this is an essentially abstract strategy game from Théo Riviere and Mathieu Aubert.
At its core Inori is a set collection worker placement game played over four rounds. However, there is some area control scoring and the standout feature of the game is that it's played on a dynamic board where your worker placements affect other players' placements and how all the players will score. Gulled by the cute fae art and theme, members of the Board's Eye View team were surprised at the extent of the 'take that' interaction in this 2-4 player game: it's quite a cutthroat game, especially as players are able to take actions that effectively deny scoring opportunities to an opponent. Cards score only if they are completely populated, so whereas players may often initially be competing for the best rewarding spots on a card, you can find by mid-game it's better to leave a card incomplete so that an opponent is unable to benefit from the score they were expecting to rack up for it. This also determines the colour of cards that appear on the board in the next round.
Tho' Inori is playable with two, we've much preferred it as a highly interactive game with three or four players. It plays quickly, with games mostly running to a brisk 30-40 minutes.