This time it’s Hades that Shiny Shoe’s game feels similar to, but with some delicious differences that make this roguelike stand out all on its own.
To understand the allure of Inkbound, you have to understand a bit about the developer making it. Shiny Shoe made a game called Monster Train that came out a few years ago, and it was a roguelike deck-building game influenced by Slay the Spire, but imaginative enough to spin that influence into its own thing – and then good enough to deliver it. That’s not an easy genre to stand out in, but it did. Understandably, there was a lot of excitement for what the studio would do next, and Inkbound is it. And whisper it, but I believe Shiny Shoe has done it again.
Slay the Spire isn’t the dominant influence this time; Hades is. There’s one huge difference in that Inkbound combat plays out in turns, rather than in real-time – and that it’s got optional multiplayer co-op for you and three others – but otherwise, so much feels the same. The way you start from scratch and build and modify your character through a run feels the same, as does having a choice of rooms to progress onto after you beat an encounter. The hub you return to where characters wait to speak to you and give you quests also feels the same, as do the dialogue panels that pop up when you talk to them. Heck, the game’s whole tone doesn’t feel that far removed. So there’s a lot of Hades here, and maybe that sounds derivative but it isn’t – Shiny Shoe has spun the formula again in a way that’s beautifully its own.
Broadly, Inkbound is a roguelike where you get one life (repeatedly) to see how far through the game you can get, and then in between runs, you return to a hub to talk to people and complete quests before trying again. The theme of the game is the written word, hence “Ink” in the title, which lends the game a papery and storybook quality, and you’re on a mission to return ink enemies have stolen in order to return stability to the world. Something like that. It’s a bit confusing, but it does what it needs to do and provides an imaginative backdrop to the mechanics of what’s going on. More importantly, it never gets in the way – it’s there to gradually absorb as you loop back around again.
Inkbound – 1.0 Launch Trailer
As with Hades, when you begin each run, you start from scratch with only a few abilities to use, known as Bindings here, and the Bindings you start with depend on the classes you choose. There are four unlocked to begin with, and four more to unlock as you play, and they’re a varied bunch, changing quite significantly in complexity from easy whacky hammer character to intriguing ‘thread enemies together’ character. An eclectic bunch.
Inkbound – 1.0 Launch Trailer
As you progress, you’ll earn rewards that will improve – or “augment” – the Bindings you have, and introduce new ones. These will do various things, from increasing their range and damage, to adding new effects and with them, creating combo possibilities, and so on. Later on, you can transform the entire Binding itself. What you can do also depends on the rarity of what you’re offered as a reward. There are a few tiers, and the rarer ones are reserved for tougher battles. With this in mind, the game will offer you harder encounters alongside standard ones, to tempt you. I always go for them – it not only makes for better rewards but makes the game more challenging, and therefore interesting, as a result. The same rarity risk-reward is true for items you can collect – Vestiges – that offer you passive benefits, and if you’re smart, combine with the abilities you’re using to devastating effect.
So far, so Hades – the big difference revolves around combat. As I said, it’s turn-based, and it takes place in small circular arenas that gradually get more unsafe as mini-battle royale storms close in on them. At the top of the round, enemies appear and showcase their intentions for what they’re going to do at the end of the turn. They might be about to attack in a particular circular area, they might be about to charge in a corridor-shaped path, or they might be about to attack you directly, or something else. Whatever it is, you need to look at it all and figure out what to do. Or, more to the point, where to move to in order to get safe.
Inkbound – 1.0 Launch Trailer
Positioning is vital in this puzzle but you only have so much resource movement to use, and when you start encountering enemies whose attack directions change when hit, you can find yourself inadvertently trapped in shifting attack zones and facing a bucketload of damage. Complicating the movement puzzle this further are Will pick-ups – Will being the resource you use to power abilities – which often lie just out of reach, or in the middle of danger, and tempt you into taking risks. The skill of combat, then, is in doing damage but also avoiding it. It’s in starting the round with an overwhelming barrage of damage poised to be unloaded on you, then skillfully weaving your way out of it with a mix of avoidance, killing, and damage negation.
The magic of Inkbound is in how this all comes together. The game
