Inkshade

This game is simply marvelous. Inkshade is a rogue-lite that oozes darkness, mystery, and spectacle. What seemed to be a spiritual successor to Inscryption, Inkshade proves itself to be a completely unique experience of its own. The main similarities between the two being the 'demonic, otherworldly narrator that wants you to play their game' gimmick and the escape room type puzzle that is laid out before you to solve in between rounds. On any given run you will select your path and encounter a very sizable amount of enemy types, special events, lore exposition, and loot; all laid out on a beautiful map for you to navigate. Anyone who has played STS or Inscryption should be familiar with this style of level advancement. The runs start out slow but the main element here that really attracts me is the meta-progression and intense strategy involved while in combat. Moving pieces around and determining the best course of action can sometimes be a very methodical exercise in troop alloc...

An absolute blast of a love letter to Inscryption and Daniel Mullin's style games. Aspiring Inscryption-likes behold what the benchmark is!

This game takes all the right lessons from Inscryption. The atmosphere is excellent and most importantly, the sound design is immaculate.

I enjoyed the design of the base rogue-lite game and upgrading pieces for the tactics-style gameplay. But... The game itself is just too dark and the walkable area is a mess. The board can be thematically dark, which is a cool idea in theory. It instead leads to frustration and confusion when you can't SEE anything. Something as simple as identifying which piece of yours is which is not a difficulty I was hoping for when playing a tactics game.

I was hoping for a clever tactical experience, like Into the Breach, XCOM, or Darkest Dungeon. Instead the combat is just completely boring. It's mathematically impossible to beat until you've upgraded your units a lot. Every combat is just a pure stat-check of whether or not you have enough HP to aggro enemy units one at a time. I have no interest in investing hours into the metacurrency just so that I don't automatically lose battles. At one point I was able to get a ranged unit to attack downhill without getting hit back. That's about it for strategy.

The inevitable comparisons to Inscryption do this game a completely-self-inflicted disservice. This game is fascinating in its own right. Visually, this is a ripoff of Inscryption Act 1, full stop. It's not trying to not be, and that's, facially, fine, it's a good art style. Unfortunately that's basically where the comparisons end and this game deserves significantly more credit than "It's kinda like Inscryption Act 1" This game has far more in common with Fire Emblem than it does Inscryption. You have a gaggle of drastically-stronger units facing down overwhelming quantities of weaker units that can still sometimes murder you to death dramatically. You are forced to exploit the intentionally-very-simple enemy AI to gain tactical advantages and overcome the odds, and losing a unit you care about is devastating but recoverable. There's no in-map RNG except maybe enemy targeting (letting the enemies do things that matter is a bad idea generally, so it doesn't come up much). I d...

A diamond in the rough. There is a lot to love here - the base Inscryption-like gameplay of upgrading your units, playing curated combats segmented by periods of exploration is excellent. The production value is high and the polish is great. There are a lot of buts though. You have a billion different units, but due to the nature of the upgrade system (the fastest and most efficient way through the game is just to spend a lot of money upgrading the best units, usually those with long range and a lot of attack to game the AI) all runs will be similar and likely rely 90% on your starting lineup, meaning the "roguelike" nature of the game is minimal. You are also always forced to repeat boss battles, even if you can skip the rest, and which can be a massive chore because they quickly become trivial. And the balancing means there is really nothing to come back for once you complete the game: You can steamroll every encounter with upgraded lategame units. The exploration segments are fu...

Inkshade is a very fun game that fans of inscryption would 100% enjoy. Both the board game, and exploration of the world feel very enjoyable, the puzzles arent too difficult, and the combat is difficult but rewarding. All in all I would recommend the game. My only issue with the game so far is that its definitely too dark in places but other than that, I have no complaints. This review will be updated once im done the game

The theming of the game is heavily inspired by inscription, a game I love, so I had high hopes coming into this. But the gameplay loop is just... boring? Maybe (?) the game is balanced around permanent upgrades and it is expected that runs kill you early so you can upgrade the characters you have? Or maybe there is some "trick" to combat that somehow allows you to defeat enemy clusters twice as big as yours. Anyway, I didn't find it fun and can't be bothered to grind for hours in the hopes that it may become fun later.

I'd still recommend playing Inscryption first, but this game scratches the same itch and does so quite well. Horror/Escape Room/Roguelite is a heavenly combination. The presentation is fantastic, and the lore was quite satisfying