Inkbound, developed and published by Shiny Shoe, is an action adventure MMORPG in which you play as a Needless, a blank slate born from the Sea of Ink. In Inkbound, you adventure through many various worlds searching for a way to save the many stories that make up the world around you from fading away to nothing but a memory. The game boasts a wide variety of playstyles and promotes a versatile co-op experience amongst friends, as you all work together to reach the end of the procedurally-generated dungeons. And while this game is in pre-alpha, there is a good sense as to what kind of game Inkbound will be.
PROS:
Inkbound’s strongest card it plays is its worldbuilding, and this is done via two fronts: the art and the narration. Starting with the art, Inkbound boasts a simple, yet stylized world that breathes personality and breeds mystery and intrigue. Bright, colorful, and equally adorable and fantastical, the game’s graphics help sell the world as this strange, yet charming place that the player would love to get lost in. Not only this, but each dungeon is chosen from the player via a selection of different options, so the player can be exploring a night market at one point and find themselves in an overgrown magical garden the next.
This is also aided by the game’s narration and story. The world itself is constructed via a series of stories, each dungeon taking inspiration via these pages the player chooses from. However, the pages are beginning to draw blank, and the stories upon them are beginning to vanish. Without them, these dungeons will disappear as well, and the realm that Inkbound takes place in will fall to ruin. It is an extremely unique and daring approach to construct a world of worlds such as this, but for this game, it works extremely well at creating a great sense of scope and stakes.
CONS:
But while the game’s world, art, and story are all really well-done, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. The game plays much like a standard MMORPG where the player has a select amount of abilities they can use throughout combat. However, they are placed on cooldown after using them, which isn’t helped by the game’s turn-based combat system. So a six-turn cooldown can really feel drawn out and long-winded. There are mechanics that aid in reducing this issue, such as orbs that spawn each turn that speed up the cooldowns at the cost of using up the player’s action bar that dictates how many attacks they can do or how much they can move across the arena during their turn. However, while they help, they don’t get rid of the problem at all. This all leads to combat that feels extremely slow and rather boring.
Not only this, but the balancing of the game could use some work. The game’s second mission requires you to travel through the dungeon realm as far as you can go, which allows the player to travel through multiple dungeons in one run. Unfortunately, the difficulty ramps up between the first and second dungeon exponentially. The player’s damage stays relatively low while the enemy’s damage and health jump up significantly. Overall, this dissuades players from attempting a second dungeon at all.
Finally, the game is focused on exploring these dungeons, and I understand that the game is still in pre-alpha, so things are subject to change. However, the dungeons themselves hold little to do other than battling enemies or finding upgrades. It might be weird to consider this an issue, but the methods of constructing the levels make it an issue. The level follows an a/b/a/b structure, where “a” is an arena for fighting enemies, and “b” is an upgrade or recovery zone, with the slashes between them being empty corridors. It hinders the gameplay by causing the dungeons, an area that should be the most fun and exciting, to feel boring and repetitive.
CONCLUSION:
Overall, the game itself holds a lot of merit. While the gameplay struggles to garner excitement or overdoes it via ramping up the difficulty too much, the game’s world feels substantial enough to still invite the player to explore and adventure. With friends, this game is rather fun, and I’d highly recommend it when it finishes development. Solo, the game is rather difficult to get through. All in all, the game has a lot to fix, but there are glimmers of what Inkbound wants to be peeking from within.
You can add Inkbound to your wishlist via Steam.
Related: Reviews by Matthew White
An avid gamer, Matthew is also an aspiring game developer. Because of this, Matthew knows not only what makes a game great, but also the hard work and artistry required to craft such a phenomenal experience.
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