Inkbound

Pirated this game years ago and 100% it. One of my favorite roguelikes of all time. Its a shame it never blew up.

The game starts out fun enough. However, after several playthroughs, I've learned that your character never truly becomes stronger. You just unlock more build combinations to utilize during a run. It plays like Slay the Spire in that regard. The problem with unlocking new items that are not definitively better than other items already accessible, is that you consistently slim down your chances of ever using a build you know works. Everything is random, so you'll just have to wing it--take what you get and like it.

A very robust turn based game with simple mechanics to start but lots of depth in the form of builds, characters, and challenge modes. It doesn't feel overly complex at any point but stays challenging at every rank you reach. I played mostly multiplayer and only played solo for achievements- both modes had surprisingly different balancing and different characters are stronger/weaker in each mode. The one thing that docked points for me was that the story was just walls and walls of text and wasn't engaging enough for me to stay involved in- so little is shown through progression unlocks/visuals that you are left reading without it really feeling impactful. Overall I would recommend to fans of titles like slay the spire, for the king, or monster train. For achiev hunters: Achievement wise the game is a loooong grind to 100%, so just be prepared for that if you are an achievement hunter. Also keep in mind that both solo play and multiplayer are REQUIRED for 100% and the player count has dropped a lot in recent years- so expect to link up with someone on discord if you are solo to finish those achievements off (this requires a minimum of 20 games played together, unless the other player already has r20 multiplayer unlocked- if they do: I think you can skip the earlier ranks and just do r10 and r20 for achievs) Some of the achievements (especially "A Master Lorist") are quite RNG- so you will be doing lots of runs to find those last few vestiges which can feel very grindy and repetitive. None of the achievements feel staggeringly broken or obnoxious to grind; so although its a high hour count, i found it to be an enjoyable 100%