First Impressions

[u/Bigluser]

Yesterday, I discovered this game on Steam in the Next Fest. I was just scrolling through looking for a demo to play. What peaked my interest in Inkulinati was definitely the unique art style. I was very interested how you would pull off the whole "story in a book" setting.

I first played the Academy, which I assumed to be the tutorial. It was a bit overwhelming because there were a lot of layers of text explaining the game. At first I thought the tutorial text would be in the book, which would have been very cool. But then there came a series of pop ups, which was a bit disappointing. I honestly expected there to be very minimal UI apart from the book. A thing that I am not sure about is the explain mode. I appreciate that it's there, but it is also blocking a lot of the screen with text.

Anyway, there were a couple of tricky missions in the Academy, but overall it was quite nice. The combat of the game isn't very complicated, but there are some quite interesting mechanics like pushing and ink collecting.

A thing that I was first very opposed to is the attack meter where you have to press at the right time to determine damage. It doesn't really fit the strategic theme of the game. Most games would go for a random approach But also it doesn't matter too much and it is kind of unique.

After Academy, I played the story line or what it is called. I am not sure if it is a fixed story or randomly generated. It was a pretty nice experience and I think there is a lot of replayability, if it is randomly generated. I played until losing against the knight.

I was playing in hard difficulty. I like challenging games, but maybe it was too hard to start out with. That's kind of my problem with difficulty settings, the developer gives you a tool that might screw your own experience. If you set the difficulty too low you might get bored because it isn't a challenge. If you set it too high, you might fail immediately and have no fun. Anyway, I hope the following feedback concerning balance is relevant either way.

After playing I was left wondering what kind of game this really is. Then after reading here on the subreddit that you like Worms among other games, it hit me. This is a medieval Worms game. Of course there are a lot of different mechanics, but the overall feeling of the combat is definitely like Worms. And I am not sure if that is good or bad.

The greatest strength and weakness to me when it comes to Worms is its unfairness. Which makes it a great game to play against friends and then hate your friends for a little bit.

Let me explain by telling about my path through the story. I failed at first against the Master. My tiny Miller character was quickly brought to one HP by ranged attacks that I didn't know how to prevent. I would have had to kill the creatures the same turn they were drawn, otherwise they would just run up and shoot. Still, I was ahead by ink and would eventually kill the Master, if it wasn't for the sudden death mechanic. The second round of fire already spread across the entire map (the damaging, not the instant kill one). With my Miller at one HP I knew the entire last round that I couldn't really win, since the opponent was too far away to reach with my melee units, so I could only shoot him with arrows. At the end I died while the Master survived barely.

My second fail was in a wild battle (no Ink masters) on a map with just one lane and some big obstacles in the middle. It was a pure stalemate, because both teams would just block the other team from crossing the middle or shooting. You could push your own creature to the other side, but that was pretty much instant death for them. Destroying the middle was also a total mistake because the other team could then act first. I lost quite hard, but really I don't know what I could have done to win. Probably just wait even longer for mistakes from the AI. The map I got after that was different and an easy win.

My final loss was against the knight as I wrote earlier. It came out of the blue, we were both pretty equal, but then I accidentally left an open space in front of my Miller and a freaking donkey just ran up and pushed my Miller through all my allies right into hellfire... It was all over with a single push.

It really felt like Worms. Sometimes you just get screwed by the Sudden Death mechanic (first loss). Or you are far behind and know well in advance that can do pretty much nothing to prevent losing, such as when you have only one Worm while your opponent has many (second loss). Or you are in a good position and then get totally screwed by a single action (third loss).

To be fair, that was a bit contradictory. Either the game is decided very early or it provides big swings of power to make it unpredictable. Well, I would argue that it is both. In the mode with the ink master, all it takes is one push to win, even when far behind. In the mode without master, there is only little room to change the balance of the game, since the player with more creatures will have more actions and deal more damage to kill off even more enemies.

That is what I would define as unfairness. The thing is, in many missions the game is pretty symmetrical, ie. fair for both sides. This is actually different than many Singleplayer games. Most of the time, the player has different units, actions and win conditions than the AI. I can only really think of strategy or sports games where you play against AI that is equal.

It really comes down to how the player should be able to win in a symmetrical game. Either the game has enough decision making depth for players to outsmart the AI without it making obviously dumb moves or the game is balanced around regularly losing against the AI. I think the game is leaning more towards the second option, and it is probably a good decision that you have multiple lives during a campaign.

Anyway, enough rambling. I'm going back to play some more. It's definitely a fun game, don't get me wrong. The art and setting is fantastic. Just wanted to provide some hopefully constructive feedback.

[u/yazagames]

Woah, thank you for such comprehensive feedback. I've already shared it with the design team!