Inkbound

Could have been great.

Great if you like to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... Seriously, finished my run on 2nd try, finished a few more times for a few different bosses, same areas and all though, they add some difficulty modifiers and a few trinkets here and there, but it's pretty much all the same over and over and over.

dead game ez skip

as usual, i beg steam for a neutral review option. no full damage recap in this kind of game is absolutely criminal. theres no way to tell how viable certain builds are, how certain builds will hold up in solo or coop etc. and knowing the game devs abandoned ship after a failed battlepass and lack of revenue (so therefore no further development) really sucks. especially because stats recap was apparently on the roadmap at some point? womp womp. maybe they will update, and then i will revisit this review. game is still fun though. probably only buy on massive discount. From a mod on the official inkbound reddit: [i]On the discord the dev team announced that the shiny shoe team has decided to no longer continue ongoing support for the game citing insufficient sales to continue the project. The team says that they plan to keep servers running for the foreseeable future and continue to discount the game to a lower and lower price but not release any new content for the foreseeable future as well. Shiny shoe stated that they are a small team and have decided to move focus to a different product they plan to announce when ready, but to expect radio silence till then.[/i]

There's some great ideas concerning characters and their play mechanics but, sadly, Inkbound is designed for online co-op so single player is quite shallow; requiring many runs to tediously 'grind' up your stats so that you stand a chance against a level boss. All devices and mechanics are given wacky terms to elude to a sophisticated learning curve but it all boils down to hot-bar abilities, currency and optional buffs to select at the start of each run. Can't recommend unless you're going to play online and we all know how long most multiplayer games remain populated these days....

A solid roguelite for 2 players with great focus on cooperation mechanics. The lore is also surprisingly deep that I really enjoy, and the voice acting is great

This game is a BLAST. I just wish it had more players and made more of an impact.