Shades of Hades in an inky roguelite adventure
There’s never anything in the pots, is there? At least in Zelda games you sometimes come across a piece of heart while going on a smashing spree through someone’s carefully compiled crockery collection, but in the modern roguelite they’re empty, pure window dressing, as the real pickups are earned from defeating enemies.
RealmofInkis a great looking game, taking inspiration from hand-drawn Chinese art that elevates it to something you won’t easily tire of looking at, especially in motion. There’s a softness to its visuals, the detail of weapon racks, forges, monkey statues and braziers easily picked out but not overwhelming. It’s a Unity game, and the Steam demo provided good 4K performance on an RTX 3080.
There’s an Ancient Greek inspiration too. Specifically, Hades. The game is an isometrically viewed roguelite with an emphasis on creating builds to smack and slash your way through crowds of foes and bosses. There’s a realm between runs where you can switch weapons, talk to characters, practice combat moves and try to explain the nature of your rotund pet, Momo, to an anthropomorphic fox.
Step through a portal, and you’re taken to the game itself. RealmofInkhas a story that dovetails nicely with the repetitive, run-based nature of roguelites: main character Red has a revelation one day while smacking down the fox demon that razed her home. It’s revealed that she’s actually a character in a story, fated to repeat the same task and controlled by It, the spirit of the book. Following this epiphany, Red manages to leave the story, entering an inn, called Fox Inn, that’s run by a fox who comments on Red’s ‘fox ink’. There’s also a fox in amech suit.
THE DASH IS ESSENTIAL IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SWAMPED BY ENEMIES
ICED INK
Eventually you’ll unlock two other characters, and fight through four worlds while collecting upgrades. There are Ink Gems that map to the triggers of a controller and are basically special attacks on a cooldown. Fairly soon after starting through the snowy early levels I have a shield and an AoE attack, and Red has a useful dash move during which she’s invulnerable, which by default has two ch
