Dead Ink

I saw someone else say it, but I need to agree with them in my own review. The game has some really compelling concepts, the vertical world, and the environments. But the combat is really bad. The attacks are slow and there is no stagger or poise. This makes combat more annoying than anything. To succeed it feels like you have to run in, get one poke and try to dodge out of the way, you aren't really going to land a combo unless you parry something. And that roll is so unresponsive and clunky. Everything feels needlessly slow too, swings, rolls, and healing take forever. If they improve the combat to be more fluid and fun, then I will update this, but as it is, this game is just not enjoyable to play.

EDIT COMBAT PATCH 1.1: The combat improvment works wonders! It is challenging and the slightest mistake can cause your death, but it is now fair if you read the attacks correctly. It still can be improved further but now the game is enjoyable, and I can warmly recommend it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great concept and environment, Terrible combat. Let me explain: your attack don't interupt or even delay enemy attack, so even if you attack first, you will be hit in return 95% of the time. You cannot interupt your attacks by any mean, and the recovery time after your attack is HUGE (even the light one). The roll is slow and short, not very useful. To give an exemple: I attack an unaware enemy from the back with a heavy attack, enemy instantly turn and hit me before my attack animation ended. If there is some change in the game combat system in the future, I'll gladly come back to it, until then, it's unfortunately a refund.

(Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42150626-Jarl's-Game-Treasury/]my curator[/url] for more reviews like this) Dead Ink is a very interesting take on the soulslike genre with a bit of jank, but I've played jankier before. To begin with, I'd like to address some of the negative reviews which complain about the combat. I played through this game in early 2026, after the combat patch and running update, and most of the issues mentioned in those reviews have been resolved. The top negative review mentions there being no stagger or poise, for example, but in the updated version I played, enemies always staggered after taking a couple of hits. So the complaints you read in older negative reviews may no longer apply to the game's current state. The game is set in a very, very vertical tower with brutalist architecture and overgrown vegetation littering your path. It's a compact game world that doesn't expand very far into the X and Y axes, but goes all in on the Z axis. There's even achievements for reaching the highest and lowest points of the tower! You begin your journey with very little information but eventually figure out that you have to find a certain terminal to escape the tower by. Visually, the game looks atmospheric, but the perspective might take a little getting used to. It's presented from a straight top-down perspective, no angle. Movement is sort of like in twin stick shooters: WASD to walk, mouse to turn. But unlike most twin stick shooters, you don't rotate your character but the camera. Your character always faces "up" and holding W will always make you walk "up". It's a bit unusual, but works quite well after a bit of practice. Combat follows the soulslike formula, taking its inspiration mostly from the original Dark Souls. It's slow and deliberate rather than fast and frantic. There's no stamina, but most weapons only have combos of 2 to 3 hits after which there is a short delay before your next swing. There's a dodge roll to get out of trouble, you can block with your shield, and you can time a parry to stagger the enemy. While it can sometimes feel a little stiff, I found the combat engaging, and different enemies are best handled with different approaches. My favorite weapon was the spear for its reach and straight-ahead attack (a sword that swings sideways can bounce off walls in narrow corridors). The most unique feature of this game is how it implemented souls/experience - here it's called "ink". You start out at a printer (which is this game's version of bonfires) that has a certain amount of ink stored. You gain ink from killing enemies, and when you return to a printer, you can store your currently held ink there. This ink remains stored [i]in this particular printer[/i]. Whenever you die, you have to re-print yourself at any of the printers you discovered. Your character has a base cost of 50 ink to reprint, and your weapons and equipment also cost ink, so every time you die, you have to pay a little bit of ink. Theoretically you can run out of ink and get a game over, but reprinting with a basic weapon loadout is cheap, enemies drop a decent amount of ink, and there's enough of them close to printers that you can easily stock up on ink and never run out. The most interesting gameplay implication of the ink system is that any items you carry also get turned into ink when you die or drop your ink at a printer. You can find blueprints that allow you to print items for your loadout, but any carried items you don't have a blueprint for are gone when you store your ink. That includes keys. So if there's a large distance between a key and a door you CANNOT use the printers to fast travel because that turns the key into ink. You have to go on foot, overcoming all the challenges on the way. I really quite liked that as it's a unique twist on the bonfire mechanic. The best part of this game is the exploration. It comes close to Dark Souls 1 with its interconnected level design, doors that only open from one side, hub areas you keep returning to. After defeating the first boss, the game opens up and lets you go in different directions and you keep unlocking shortcuts that lead you back to where you came from. It pays to approach ledges and look down, because sometimes dropping off a ledge is the way forward! There is no jump button, and whenever you walk off a ledge you drop straight down. This makes it easy to tell whether reaching a lower platform is possible or not. It takes a while to get used to the perspective but once you do, looking out for new ways forward or little secrets below you is really fun. This game is among the better soulslikes when it comes to capturing the original DS's exploration. Overall, I can fully recommend this to anyone who plays soulslikes for the level design. It has a cool setting, some unique ideas, and an excellent interconnected world with winding paths and hidden nooks and crannies. There are only three boss fights so if that's what you play the genre for, this isn't the right game for you. Dead Ink is all about the exploration, baby. That said, it's not a very long game. It took me only 6 hours to complete, and there's even a speedrun achievement for finishing it within 1 hour. For the amount of content, the full price of 20€ is a bit much. I got it on a sale for below 10, and would recommend you do the same. It's absolutely worth 10€, but not 20.

很硬核，尤其初期没有强化过人物的情况下非常容易死，感觉可以适当的降低敌人的伤害。 作者属实是把垂直箱庭探索玩明白了，虽然对玩家的空间感和记忆力有一定要求（尤其拿了阿尔法钥匙再返回反应堆的路），但也不至于看哪里都差不多从而找不到路。体量虽然不大但是完成度和原创度都很高，算是最近玩的相当满意的一个同类游戏。 最大的缺点应该是动作整体比较僵硬，很多攻击动作收益非常小，所以不要抱着玩动作游戏的心态来玩。另外，恐高症慎入，后期有几个地方确实能让人头晕。

Cute little souls-like, one of the few souls-likes that actually tries to play with the level design aspect and not just combat. Balance is a little whack, which I guess is par for the course at this point, but I didn't mind that so much given how short the game is. I wouldn't worry about running out of ink as a an early-midgame loadout is under 200 ink while a single regular enemy drops around 120 and you can (and inevitably will) farm thousands upon thousands of ink.

[h1]VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE[/h1] A [strike]good[/strike] simulator of the blue screen of death. No need, thanks.

Works perfectly well on Steam Deck so far. Interesting spin on the souls-like formula so far.

Is this a good souls-like experience? Yes. If you're a fan of that genre, you'll enjoy this. But it's not well balanced. Is it worth 20 bucks? No. Wait for a sale. Here are the pros and cons so far. Pros: - Striking visual/audio direction. The silence in ambiance with unsettling sounds is already strong. But it's topped with this top-down view as you carefully descend the tower of plants, concrete, metal, and ink. - Unique approach in progression. You don't upgrade stats or weapons. You collects blueprints and ink. So when you respawn, you respawn with the items and other equipment you want, costing you ink. The catch? You have to deposit the ink before you die, or else the spawn point you want may not have enough ink. Cons: - Difficult to adjust to perspective. If what you saw in the trailers looks hard to focus on, with the camera looking straight down, you might have trouble with this game. It took me a bit to work with it. - Not great with platforming. This game is VERY effective at giving you vertigo, but part of that reason is because when you fall, you fall like a brick. You go straight down, so you better make sure what you're aiming for is right under you. You also don't jump. This makes heights more intense, but also makes exploration more restrictive. - Enemies don't have friendly fire. Not exactly fair when swings and bullets phase through them. - Can't sneak up on enemies. You can't sneak up and backstab them or anything. They know you're there immediately no matter how slow you move. Some areas spawn you with enemy's backs to you. - No running. You can't run, which makes backtracking a slog. - No map. This game REALLY needs one, with how it's laid out. Too bad. - Overuse of enemy shields. Your attack don't do anything when an enemy shield in in that direction, even if they're stunned from a parry.

从新买回来 改为好评了 ，战斗感觉好一点了 ，我很喜欢这个游戏 ，但感觉还有不少问题要优化 ，改键还不支持 希望支持一下，锁定敌人不能切换，贴墙的时候一直打墙打不到人 ，期待续作 ！场景真的很有氛围感 ，如果有续作的话 希望加入天气系统， 能下雨 ，下雪就更完美了，武器的话可以加入一些枪之类的可以射击的

This game is clearly inspired by the Dark Souls series when it comes to it's mechanics. I found the game rather intriguing . The objective seems to be to make our way down the tower's many floors. During our journey we'll have to fight many foes and interact with the environment to progress. To aid with this, we are able to collect ink from fallen enemies to use on printers that act as checkpoints and loadouts for our character. I recommend it. Gameplay here: https://youtu.be/P0NG5ZG04_g