Inkbound
There’s a terrific roguelike idea trapped in INKBOUND’s messy turn-based battles
Turn-based Hades? Don’t recall wishing for that with my cursed monkey’s paw, but I’d trust the developers of the brilliant Monster Train with my first born. Inkbound never reaches those heights, but its best ideas have huge potential. It’s an isometric roguelike wherein battles start with enemies surrounding you and kindly telegraphing exactly how they’re going to attack.
You’ve got a limited amount of movement and attack power each turn to deal as much damage as possible, build up enough shield to block incoming blows, or move out of the way so you avoid them entirely. A number hovers over your head telling you how much damage you’re going to take.
Skull next to that number? Uh oh.
Positioning yourself to avoid damage in a turn-based strategy game can’t help but remind me of Into the Breach. The genius of that game was in how clear and readable its little death dioramas were. You could have printed them in the puzzle pages of a newspaper. Inkbound not so much.
Area of effect attacks are shown by a circle displaying the impact zone. Direct, unavoidable attacks are arrows connecting you to the offending enemy. Attacks that see enemies charging you are an arrow with a rectangle around it. Fine in isolation, but when they’re all in play, it can be like trying to understand the world’s most cluttered, over-annotated Venn diagram of death.
You can play the game in online co-op, and the game pushes you in that direction, especially with its almost MMO-like hub where other players can be seen scampering between vendors. Occasionally fun, but that lack of clarity of information makes it difficult to keep track of what your friends are doing and why, and if anything more characters on screen only makes battles even less readable.
The world’s most cluttered, over-annotated Venn diagram of death
But there is enough good in here to keep me coming back. You get four starter loadouts, with excellent opportunities for customisation during a run. You get three starting attacks, with space to obtain several more, and these can be augmented with bonuses like inflicting poison, giving you shield if you use them in a certain way, or increased area of effect. But it’s the vestiges where the game starts getting clever, bordering on brilliant.
SMASHING IDEA
Vestiges are talismans that grant a specific boon, such as inflicting burning whenever you attack or granting bonus damage on your first turn. They also each belong to one or more sets – themed groups of vestiges. The more of a matching set you have, the more extra bonuses you unlock. So a vestige that adds bleed to your attacks, for example, will have Eviscerator as one of its sets, which grants bonus bleed damage if you have two of that set, buffs your att
