Inkbound

Inkbound is a turn-based, role-playing and roguelike game for one to four players. Players control Needless, servants of a library world, who fight monsters in order to rewrite history. These monsters are fought in a series of turn-based encounters, on each turn players can move their character up to a certain distance, and receive a certain amount of mana to use on abilities. Players are given perfect information on what actions enemies will take and how much damage they will deal. Each encounter is time-limited by a circle that shrinks each turn.

Inkbound is structured into runs. In each run, players choose one of several character classes known as aspects, each of which begins with a starting set of abilities. These abilities can be replaced and upgraded with rewards throughout the run. Players can also obtain items called vestiges, which grant a specific buff throughout the run.

Inkbound was developed and published by Shiny Shoe, a San Francisco-based studio founded in 2011 and best known for Monster Train (2020). According to CEO Mark Cooke of Shiny Shoe, the studio wanted to develop a cooperative multiplayer game after publishing Monster Train. There was tension at Shiny Shoe over whether to support a single-player experience; the released game is playable in single-player or multiplayer and Cooke described "multiplayer remaining a fun way to play but not pushed as far as it could have been if we had gone co-op only".

Development began in 2021. Inkbound was announced in June 2022 and released into early access in May 2023. The initial version featured a paid season pass for cosmetics, on top of being a paid title. Cooke said this was a business decision to sustain long-term updates for the game, describing a plan that "All gameplay, content updates are going to be free to any owner of the game." This monetization model was criticized upon release, with Cooke saying that Shiny Shoe was "blindsided by the amount of negative feedback", leading them to remove the season pass and instead plan for paid DLC.

Inkbound received "generally favorable" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic. 90% of critics recommended the game, according to OpenCritic.

Writing for PC Gamer, Abbie Stone described the game as "clever yet frustratingly muddled". They described the combat encounters as less reactive than desired and said they sometimes felt impossible. They described the character variety and customization as keeping the game replayable, and described the vestige system as the most original feature and an interesting take on character building. Similarly, Robert Purchese of Eurogamer complimented the amount of content and a feeling of progression, describing the item set mechanic as a type of choice they had not faced before.