Official Review Inkulinati Review

They say that "the pen is mightier than the sword". In the world of Inkulinati, this phrase is taken literally. You play the role of an apprentice inkulinati, learning the art of drawing medieval illustrations. Your final exam is coming up - soon you will become a real master of Living Ink. What is Living Ink, you might ask? I can see why you're still an apprentice - the name should've given you a hint. Any illustration put to paper using Living Ink comes alive on the page, in the most literal sense. Ink Masters use this uncanny resource for a variety of purposes, the most important of which is... fighting boredom. Do you have any idea how long it takes to copy a single manuscript? It takes forever! You have to kill the time somehow, right? Don't question it. Where were we? Ah, yes, the exam! Your Master awaits! Get ready to challenge him and earn your title. It's really straightforward, it won't involve a bizarre adventure involving a long journey during which you'll fight strange beasts and Ink Masters, accumulate an army of humorous creatures or fight Death itself. Trust me, would I lie to you?



The game itself follows a simple concept - you draw beasts on a 2D "page" which serves as your battlefield using Living Ink. This resource is limited and can be replenished by slaying enemies or resting your creatures on ink blots which get sucked into your inkpot at the end of each turn. The goal is, naturally, to defeat your enemy either by destroying all their units or, where applicable, kill their miniature on the battlefield called a Tiny. In order to avoid stalemates, the game is time limited - if you're a lazy bones, the impending apocalypse will engulf the field with hellish fires, forcing a more direct confrontation until only one master is left standing. It's elementary!



The stand-out element of Inkulinati is easily the monsters - they're colourful, fun and accurate to their depictions in real medieval manuscripts. Not only that, they often have special defenses, special attacks or unique abilities which inflict status effects that can turn the tides of battle. For instance, the Bishop, an ordained feline, is under divine protection. Attacking a holy man like that turns the enemy into a heretic! The divine knows who's naughty and who's nice - units who have their halos intact will deal increased damage against heathens. Of course... this only applies to those who care about holiness. If you happen to worship mammon instead of god, like a bandit, you're completely immune to the effects of foolish superstition. What if you get attacked by a donkey bard? It could fight fair and square with you, but it could just as easily fart in its pipe, giving your units a headache and causing them to skip a turn. What an ass! What drags them down is the fact that a lot of them are different versions of the same thing. A rabbit swordsman is not all that different from a dog swordsman and outside of unique creatures like the man-eating snail you can always narrow things down to "the best" unit of each category. The developers were of course aware of that and implemented a boredom system. Using the same beasts repeatedly gradually increases their boredom meter which in turn increases their ink cost. After all, the inkulinati play this game to fight boredom, and using the same unit time and time again is, admittedly, quite boring. You don't want to be the guy who constantly uses the leg sweep in a fighting game, right? Right!? Well, you can't - there's some strategy involved in keeping your roster fresh, and in order to really flood the field with units, you'll have to rotate your creatures often.


Besides fighting indirectly using their monsters, the inkulinati can affect the battlefield directly with hand gestures. Think swapping chess pieces when the other guy's not looking, but it's legal and everyone does it - get it? There's a variety of gestures, and just like with units, you accumulate more by defeating other Ink Masters or purchasing them from merchants. You can do all sorts of things, from moving creatures against their will or healing units in the middle of a fight to more naughty tricks like putting your enemies to sleep, forcing them to lose turns. There's quite a bit of strategy involved in using those hand actions because, while situational, they can score you an easy win if you know exactly when to step in. I remember going through a lengthy battle against an Ink Master, long enough that the fires of hell have started engulfing the battlefield, and because the master had his Tiny high up and very well-defended, I couldn't quite get to him with my monsters. What a pickle. It'd be a real shame if someone... gently nudged them off the edge of the map... and made them fall to their death. Such a simple action you get at the very beginning of the game, and yet, it was the strongest weapon in my arsenal!



In terms of audiovisual presentation the game doesn't skip a beat - it looks exactly like a medieval manuscript, and the sound's on-point as well. The game is, naturally, quite simplistic, but it's meant to be, so... mission accomplished! The same can be said about the performance - no noticeable hitching or stuttering, but then again, what's there to cause it? One thing that I did have some gripes with is the UI which I think could've been streamlined a little bit. My big pet peeve is that every kind of directional input does something different - Left and Right on the D-pad is not the same as Left and Right on the analog sticks or L1/L2 and R1/R2. This is rather odd in a game that, realistically, is very simple - so simple it could be played on a touchscreen. This led to some misinputs until I was fully accustomed with the controls. The developer wanted to cram every single function onto the controller all at the same time when that really wasn't needed and perhaps introducing separate screen sections or some menus would've helped. I understand trying to stick to the theme of a medieval manuscript, but if it impedes controls, that immediately reduces the enjoyment of the game.




So, did I enjoy Inkulinati? I absolutely did, in spite of my initial skepticism. There's a lot of hidden depth to the game that shines through once you accumulate more units and more gestures, and the roguelite nature of its campaign encourages replayability. In fact, you will have to complete the campaign multiple times in order to see its "true" ending, not that the humorous story is the highlight here - the game is fun even in isolation. I can see players sitting down on a couch and booting up Inkulinati to have a good, old-fashioned Hot Seat battle, much like they would with Worms in the past. This makes the lack of an online multiplayer mode especially odd - a glaring omission that Yaza Games is probably planning to address with an update at a later date, at least according to their FAQ. With that being said, despite its shortcomings, the game is very unique - there's nothing quite like it out there, and it's a great first title for this developer. Should you buy it? Well, do you like Monthy Python and the Holy Grail? Do you like deceptively simple strategy games? Are you looking for a game to challenge your guests at? Do you have £19.99 burning a hole in your pocket and you want to play something "different"? Inkulinati might be for you, Ink Master - just don't stain your fingers, that stuff's a nightmare to wash off!