Summary
Overall, I like Ink Inside. Outside of the technical issues, I did find the gameplay enjoyable and I do like the story so far. I think however, it could benefit from a patch to fix a lot of the issues currently present.
Developer: Blackfield Entertainment LLC
Publisher: Entalto Publishing
Platforms: Nintendo Switch (Reviewed), Steam, Xbox, Playstation
Review Copy provided by Publisher
Ink Inside is a newer RPG that landed on consoles last month after being on Steam for a while. The game is a mix of an adventure RPG like Golden Sun where certain abilities are required to get to new zones but with a combat system most comparably to Dodgeball. The premise of the game is solid, it follows our hero who was recently made aware of his existence in a land of hand drawn art.
The story is told from two frames of view, the first is live action cutscenes that set up the real world moments that created the world we play in. There is a little girl who is the artist of all these different worlds and our characters and she has a few of the notebooks. Each character is brought to life within the notebook and they have an origin memory which encapsulates her feelings and thoughts at the time of their creation. However, not all characters are created equal, some doodles are drawn with partial highlighter. This highlighter brings certain characters extraordinary powers and they are basically legendary heroes to the people of the notebooks. Unfortunately, the notebooks are put inside of a closet with a leaky ceiling and the water falls upon these notebooks to meld the world and cause chaos within the notebooks themselves. Inside the notebooks this force is known as the “Sog” and has the power to turn the inhabitants into mindless creatures that will attack everything around them.
As I said we begin our adventure as Stick, he is one of the doodles in the notebooks can comes to life with a partial vision of his origin event or Gene Meme. He starts on a journey across the notebook to see if he can put together his memories and discover his purpose. Along the way he meets up with a few other characters that assists him from both a narrative perspective as well as a combat role. Since Stick can’t remember a thing, most of the characters try to assist him with goals and giving him directions to discover his origin memory. As you progress, you unlock more and more of this memory which are told in live action cutscenes involving the little girl and her family. We come to discover rather quickly that Stick isn’t all that he seems. Although he is missing one of his arms at most times, in special situations his arm reappears as a highlighter arm granted him more abilities. This allows him to combat the Sog and try to save the land as well from this evil force. The game is about 50% voice acted which is great and brings life to the characters in the world, and the actors did a great job for the most part. I really liked the second playable character that joins the party. She is a bit chaotic to say the least. The music is solid and does a good enough job making the adventure fun and engaging. The story is also told in a great pace and has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. I especially wanted to see the cutscenes involving the origin story to see what happened.
Combat is a highlight as I think everyone typically loves the game of Dodgeball. You can equip Stick with 2 balls at one time, and these balls have their own unique abilities, pros and also cons. Some are faster at regeneration, some do more damage, other have status effects that are applied upon attacking. These weapons, as they were, help Stick with most combat experiences. Your goal is to obviously hit the enemies with your dodgeball while avoiding their attacks. Eventually you also get a partner in dodgeball that is controlled by either yourself or by AI when not controlling them and together you can do different things like focusing on buffing the team or focusing on attacks. Its a well balanced approach to the combat and I enjoyed it. You eventually also unlock more powers that help you access other areas of the world and different combat abilities that give you the edge in battle, most notably your highlighter arm. Once you gain enough power, you can basically grow the arm and break through the boundaries of the game and straight up attack the enemies on their side of the court really dishing out massive damage for a quick period of time. This comes in handy especially in the boss fights.
Unfortunately, the worst aspect of the game is the technical glitches that I experienced in my time with the game, but also ones that I have heard about online. I played the game on the Switch 2, so take that for what it is worth, but I experienced times where the characters completely stopped appearing in certain areas of the game which made navigation difficult to progress. I’m not sure if this is specifically on the Switch as a whole or just the Switch 2, but it made the game downright unplayable at times. On top of this, half the time the dodgeballs wouldn’t fully appear on the battlefield but the glimmer effect would still show so you had to run to the glimmer and pick up a random dodgeball and not be able to determine which one you were picking up. Since each dodgeball has different powers it became a guessing game at what ball I was going to grab most of the fights. The resolution of the game was also pretty bad, a lot of the lines and images were pretty jagged, but this wasn’t too bad considering the hand drawn cartoon art style.
Overall, I like Ink Inside. Outside of the technical issues, I did find the gameplay enjoyable and I do like the story so far. I think however, it could benefit from a patch to fix a lot of the issues currently present. The game’s length is about 8-10 hours and is the first game in a planned series based on a series that was original made for TV that had 3 seasons mapped. So each game will cover each season’s content, which means we won’t get all the answers to the story in this first game. So if you are looking for a fully complete story you won’t find it here. Think of Final Fantasy 7 Remake in terms of story telling. Each game is a piece of the full story arc. If you are looking for a fully fleshed out story, you may want to give it some time to see if the sequel will arrive, but at a price tag of $10 its definitely not a bad value at all. The charm and the characters, fun gameplay is worth the price of admission but again the technical issues hold it back from a must-buy type of game.
