Inkbound Review // Super Addicting Turn-Based Rogue-like

how's it going guys hope you're all having a fantastic day today we're going to be jumping into inbound and I'm honestly really excited about this one inbound is a turn-based Rog likee that was released into Early Access in the summer of 2023 the game is being developed by shiny Shu the creators of monster train it's very clear that they took the things that they learned from that game and applied them here to give us a super addicting gameplay Loop that is really shaping up to be something special as per usual everything will be broken up into chapters for you guys for easy navigation there's a lot here that I think the developers do really well and there are a few things that I definitely think need some work we'll go over everything in as much detail as possible so that you can determine for yourself whether or not this is something you'd like to sink your teeth into without any further Ado let's get [Music] started in ink bound you play as a needless a mute being that is typically of little consequence however after discovering a quill a magic creature that allows you to harness the power of bindings you become much more once we prove our strength through the tutorial we meet Ben and nib who are two quills that allude to the importance of our abilities after stepping into the portal we are granted access to the athenium a massive Library containing all of the world's stories and meet the gatekeeper who informs us of the ink bound and their struggle against the unraveled and the ever rising sea of ink that is consuming all of creation ink bound is filled to the brim with mystery and a sense of wonder as we discover new areas from different stories and meet the characters that reside within all of the characters have very unique and engaging personalities with some really great voice acting and we'll talk more about that in a bit which really sets it apart from the crowd while I do find the setting in story to be quite quite interesting and the story book like nature of the game brings on a sense of nostalgia much of the overall story is a bit esoteric and left up to interpretation in its current state however on their road map they do have plans to fully flush out the story which is something that I'm really excited to see with the foundation of the world that they've created here they can easily expand upon it adding new stories and characters as they see fit let's discuss the visuals and audio ink bounds cartoon aesthetic and storybook Vibes really hit home for me I think this game is absolutely gorgeous the different areas are well crafted and really add a lot to the overall design I think that the consistency of the design is one of the things that this game does incredibly well all of the small details really tie the whole thing together from the UI appearing as pages of a book to the combat Circle being an outline of ink the character customization is a welcome addition to the game allowing you to change the face hair and color of your character they do give you a fair amount of options and while at first glance it doesn't seem like you can really do much with it through a bit of trial and error you will see the intention behind the customization options that they've given you my first attempts at creating a character did not go very well but I put a bit more thought and effort into it and came up with a couple of different designs that I did really enjoy this is something that isn't super common in the roguelike genre and I really appreciate that they added it here and it's something that I hope we see more of in the genre the enemy design definitely further enhances the overall look and feel of the game as they perfectly match the theme of the area they are from and also match the story book aesthetic I mean just look at these Pinn dudes or these weird looking Cannon guys there are a few instances where the enemies are essentially reskinned and used for different areas but I personally don't mind the reusing of assets as long as it has a purpose and here I think it makes sense the one thing that I will say about the design choices that they have made here is that while each area has its own theme each of the combat rooms looks exactly the same with the circle in the center of the room and a bit of decoration around the outside I do wish there was a bit more variety here as it's the one part of the design that kind of Falls flat it definitely takes away from the sense of exploration and Discovery a bit it would be nice if the combat rooms had some elevation or terrain to kind of break things up a bit this could add another layer to the combat as well which I think would be really neat one thing that ink bound really Nails is its sound design every action you take has a unique and satisfying sound the music is beautiful and ominous and a lot of the lines in the game are voice acted and though I wish they would have gone the extra mile and had the entire game voice acted to really give you that full sense of immersion what we are given as well done and honestly one of my favorite Parts about the game something deep and hurtful keeps the life at Bay anger no grief maybe this is a world made for one who was lost and another who hopes to find her again all right time to move on to what will most definitely be the largest portion of this video the gameplay and mechanics there's quite a bit going on here and I'll do my absolute best to cover it all without getting too bogged down in the details let's kick things off with the combat which is really well done as I stated earlier the game is turn-based and you and your allies will play out your full turn exhausting all resources such as willpower which is this game's version of mana and your limited amount of movement before passing the turnover to your opposition this makes the flow of combat feel very fluid as the turns typically play out very quickly the enemies have attack indicators which inform you of the actions they plan to take on their turn as well as indicators above their heads for any special passives that they have such as turning to face their attacker when they receive damage or gaining damage reduction for each other enemy on the battlefield these indicators play a massive role in how you take your turn requiring you to consider what your opponent intends to do in relation to the moves that you have available once you unlock the aspect apparatus in the athenium which happens pretty early on You will choose a class before you start your run there are three starting classes and five more that you can unlock through various quests in the game there's a decent variety of play Styles and each of the classes start with specific bindings and has a unique passive for instance the Moss cloak which is a high Mobility range class starts with a dash that marks enemies causing them to take additional damage and has two attacks throw and flurry that utilizes their shuriken passive to deal massive damage discovering the different classes and learning their kits has been a lot of fun and it's what has kept me coming back for more there are three different game modes available for you to play quick dive deep dive and the daily challenge the quick Dives are just that quick and easy deep Dives on the other hand offer a challenge by presenting the player with a myriad of different modifiers that will increase the runs difficulty as you win more deep Dives you will increase your rank and they will become increasingly more difficult adding more modifiers to the run daily challenges offer you a chance to earn additional experience to go towards your season pass by completing them these runs are the same for every player and will give you an opportunity to challenge yourself and see how you stack up against other players as you progress through your run you'll be given options for new bindings from a shared pool that every class has access to of which you can pick two you'll also be able to choose vestages which are items that have a variety of different passives available that enhance your class even further you will also be able to find consumable items in the form of potions and fish you can carry two of these at a time and they will have various effects in combat you'll be able to upgrade your bindings in various Ways by adding additional effects to them or by changing the way they function all together there is a ton of customization available and a lot of potential for gamebreaking builds which are really fun to put together one thing that I did notice and something that I hope they address as development continues is the lack of variety in the shared binding pool that you pick from in runs I often see the same ones every run and it would be nice if there was a wider variety of options available there's a fair amount of information here in regards to different stats and damage types and your vestages will also have types associated with them that will have alternative effects the more of them that you have of that specific type this makes putting together a build a juggling Act of trying to pair the correct vestages together to gain the appropriate effects that best complement your class when you first start you will have a fairly limited number of vestages however as you complete quests and earn experience for your season pass you will unlock quite a few allowing for even more diverse builds throughout your run you will have to make choices in the rooms that you decide to visit each one comes with its own benefits and drawbacks with rooms that will allow you to make decisions that will impact your entire run to rooms that will allow you to discover new characters and so on one thing that I really appreciated about the different rooms was the impact that they had on my runs the combat rooms have a risk verse reward scenario where you can choose to do harder rooms for greater reward but risk losing more HP or even the entire run or you can play it safe and do a room that is less difficult but offers fewer rewards there are also rooms where you could take a chance and be faced with a run altering decision that could have negative consequences or you could go to a room with a guarantee upgrade available while you are presented with the same set of choices throughout each run the impact they can have on one run to the next is what makes these choices matter as you complete runs you will also earn experience in a season pass which I mentioned earlier this will unlock new items and give you keys that allow you to unlock trinkets which provide you with additional passives you will also unlock different cosmetic items and while there was a bit of an issue early on where the developers were attempting to monetize the game through the season pass they have since scrapped that due to the community feedback that they received and have stated that there are no plans to bring any such monetization back into the game which I think is definitely a step in the right direction let's talk about the multiplayer this game does offer the ability for you to play with up to three other players there's a built-in matchmaking system as well which is really nice allowing you to choose how many players you'd like to play with and for which game modes they recently did some updates and made it less likely that you would be paired with higher ranked players in deep Dives if you're just just starting out assuming that there are lower level players to fill that space instead in my experience the matchmaking works for parties of two very well but the weight time for a party of three or four is pretty long I've personally only ever played with one other person at a time and while the experience for the most part was fine something that I did notice is that it was quite difficult to coordinate our builds together and really utilize our kits without verbal communication typing out your intentions and what the best course of action is just isn't feasible for this reason I've mostly stayed away from the multiplayer as I don't know anyone that is playing the game and I don't necessarily want to go through the hassle of getting into a voice chat with them on Discord that being said the game does its multiplayer pretty well with all rewards being instance per person and you're not having to share any resources this makes playing with random people at least bearable as you aren't having to worry about someone taking all of the loot and you being left with nothing overall my experience with the multiplayer would have definitely been elevated if I had had communicated in a voice chat with my team however it was far from bad if you don't mind not being being able to strategize with your team very well and just playing out your turn as you see fit alongside a couple of other players then I think this is more than serviceable something that I think the game really needs is an optional built-in voice chat this would make strategizing with people a lot easier and take away from the generally chaotic experience that Co-op brings at the moment now let's talk about what you can expect as far as run link than replayability goes this is largely going to depend on you as a player but from my experience the runs especially early on are going to take you about an hour from start to finish if you can get to the end this is a pretty long time for a run and in some instances if you're the kind of person that is really going to think about each turn and try to optimize your abilities it could take even longer that being said as you increase your knowledge of the game and are able to instantly recognize the different symbols and enemies as well as your own abilities and how to use them you'll be able to make decisions more quickly and so that will obviously reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a run the multiplayer run runs will be a bit different because you are playing at the pace of other players as well meaning you'll have to wait for everyone on your team to finish their turn before the turn ends and you can continue on to the next one this takes the control out of your hands and makes you dependent on how quickly other people can make their decisions unless of course you're the one holding up the party as far as replayability goes you can honestly syn quite a lot of time into this game before you get bored there's a lot to unlock with five unlockable classes quest to complete that will progress the story and give you various rewards multiple areas to explore with different bosses and three main bosses to battle at the end of each run the Deep dive game mode gives you the ability to continuously challenge yourself and make the game harder as well which keeps the game from becoming too easy there are plans to add more villains and many bosses as well as new areas to discover which will further increase the replayability all of that paired with a season pass that is built into the game to unlock Cosmetics that honestly look pretty decent makes for an enjoyable experience that you can come back to time and time again all right I know that was a lot and I'm sure that you can tell by now that I would definitely recommend inbound I think it really captures the story book spirit and runs away with it in a very engaging and fun turn-based Rog likee experience there are some flaws and there is definitely a need for a bit more variety but given the track record that shiny shoe has with monster train and their work so far on ink bound I can honestly say that it will definitely come in time I've really enjoyed the time that I've spent with the game and I plan to continue playing it to see how far I can get in the Deep Dives and unlock some of the Cosmetics that are available if you've made it this far I sincerely want to thank you so much for your time I really hope that you found the video both informative and entertaining if you did I would be humbled if you would leave a like and consider subscribing to the channel if you'd like to join the Discord then there's a link to that down in the description as well again thank you so much for watching I hope you have a wonderful day go out there and kick some unraveled ass and I'll catch you in the next one peace

Channel: Zambrial

Views: 3,715

Keywords: inkbound, inkbound review, inkbound coop, inkbound gameplay, inkbound early access

Id: vEHT6-AJNnA

Length: 13min 55sec (835 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2024