Inkulinati Review — The Pen is Mightier

As a kid in school, I used to doodle in my notebook during class. More specifically, I would often emulate some of my favorite games by drawing up little “battles” on the margins of my classwork, in which I would take “turns” with each side of the little battle, drawing and erasing little attacks and wars as if there were some strategy involved in the whole deal.

Inkulinati brought these memories back with vivid clarity. Where I used to try to emulate video games through my drawings, Inkulinati emulates drawings in a video game. More specifically, Inkulinati is a turn-based game set upon the old drawings of the medieval era, perfectly capturing the look of some tapestry hung up on the wall of an old castle somewhere on the Sicilian peninsula.

In Inkulinati, you play as one of the masters of the living ink, engaging in exciting, if small-scale, battles upon papyrus. Each character represents the drawing one might find in ancient medieval paintings: Dogs with Swords, Rabbits with bows, etc. While these ink-bled beasts battle, they may also feel the bite of the hand that feeds them.

Yes, the artist is actually the centerpiece of each match in Inkulinati. The gameplay mechanics are relatively simple and straightforward for the genre; You summon units into battle, have them fight, and protect your boss character, who has access to the most powerful and unique abilities. Where Inkulinati separates itself is in the presentation, which is no more palpably immersive than when you use one of your hero’s “skills” and see the artist’s own hand come into whack, smudge, or push a beast aside.

The inclusion of the artist behind the pen is one of the things that truly sells Inkulinati’s presentation, which helps it go above and beyond your typical turn-based strategy game. You are truly immersed in this utterly unique, quirky fantasy of medieval artists playing a war game together,

“Quirky” is maybe the best way to describe the game, though it has several of these quirks that could be pointed out. Some good, some bad; The game also heavily features a comedic element, but considering its liberal use of fart humor, I couldn’t say I was that big of a fan.

Perhaps one of Inkulinati’s most unwelcome quirky features is its hardline tutorials. If you’ve read my reviews in the past, you know how I feel about a game that aggressively pushes tutorials in your face. You’ll know I’m even less a fan of these when these tutorials require a lot of reading, pausing the gameplay for a lesson that could have been easily taught through playing the game or simply allowing the player to explore. Forcibly holding the player’s hand is frustrating at best and sluggishly grinds the experience down to a halt at worst.

If this wasn’t enough, after you play through Inkulinati’s tutorial and enter the main game, you are once again faced with more popup tutorials, many of which reexplain many of the same concepts you had just learned. Simple mechanics, such as ladders being a way to move up and down in a level, are still explained multiple battles into a run despite disabling hints.

This is not meant as another way to access the game’s tutorial but rather a pop quiz to ensure you were paying attention in the tutorials you played before. You quite literally have to answer multiple-choice questions to get some of these popups off your screen and continue playing the game.

If you already understand how frustrated I am by popup tutorials that gatekeep the actual… well, game, you can only imagine how I felt about this feature.

Another quirky, unique feature that works better for Inkulinati is the way the game calculates damage. Often, in games of this genre, as well as many others, the damage of an attack is predicted through a random number generator. This is a tried and true system that finds its roots in the dice rolls of tabletop gaming, and while classic and foundational, it can often be annoying to leave your success entirely up to chance.

While dice rolls are still on every attack in Inkulinati, they throw in a fun little twist that mixes things up. When attacking, a sort of roulette wheel pops up with several different numbers generated on the declaration of the attack. You are then given a short amount of time to try and stop the selection on the number you choose, some being higher than others, and a skull indicating the beast in question will instantly die.

This adds an element of skill to the game without totally getting rid of the RNG or “dice roll” system that’s been grandfathered into the genre at this point, allowing those who wish to rely on their reflexes the chance to opt into a game of skill without punishing those who would rather let the game calculate the damage for them.

While one-on-one matches can be played in Inkulinati’s duels, the most interesting game mode has to be Journey. This is a roguelike campaign mode where your tiny master has persistent health and builds an army with each win, gradually becoming stronger over time.

This is undoubtedly the highlight of the experience; it takes advantage of the game’s gameplay, which, while certainly balanced and engaging, lacks the complexity to hold its own through simple duels. The roguelike element throws some randomization, higher stacks, a campaign map, and even a bit of story into the formula to keep things fresh and exciting, lest you grow bored of the presentation.

Ironically enough, boredom is actually a mechanic in this mode, which increases the cost of ink beasts you’ve drawn too often. As the game explains, masters of the living ink get bored drawing the same thing repeatedly. This might be a commentary on artists, commentary on gamers, or not even commentary at all, but boy, oh boy, did it ring true with me.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Inkulinati is available on Steam, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and GoG.