Inkbound News

Hello everyone! I’m Genevieve, one of the concept artists and modelers at Shiny Shoe. I have worked on concepts for quite a few of the NPCs and vestiges, among other assets.

The story of Inkbound involves different worlds and how details can bleed from one book to another affecting the status quo. Unsuspecting residuals that have the potential to change the course of the story. One of my favorite parts of concepting visual assets for design is connecting pieces of lore subtly through symbols and elements. I find that having these subtle connections can make a world feel more real since it is not often when something exists purely separate from everything else. Who knows what decipherable details you can find among all those vestiges.

Besides the vestiges, NPCs are a little world of their own and I’d like to share with you all my creation process for one of the NPCs in the game, the Gardener. One of the earlier designed NPCs who has a deep connection to the lore of Inkbound’s world due to her mysterious past, which can be traced by fragments scattered throughout time.

[h3]Character Lore and Inspiration[/h3]

When starting concept on an NPC, I am given a document from our loremaster Brendan that explains the overall look and feel that the NPC should have and how they fit into the world of Inkbound. For the Gardener, she is described as a free spirit who isn’t bound by rules and is very nurturing towards change and growth. The Gatekeeper, another mysterious being, is her counterpart. Where the Gatekeeper’s design is that of a tall, imposing, ridged man; the Gardener should be someone who is welcoming, a bit chaotic, and loves the ‘happy little accidents’ that boundless freedom can bring. Brendon also provides some specifics for the design, like how the Gardener’s body seems to be blending with the chaos she nurtures. Parts of her are either overgrown with plant matter or replaced by them entirely.

[h3]Concepting Process[/h3]

With these details in mind, I usually start off messing around with silhouettes to get the overall proportions locked in as well as the correct feeling the visual impact of the NPC should have. Her silhouettes are all on the short side since that is how she is described in the design document. I mainly played around with where the bulk of her stature should be and the large shape types in her design; going for more round shapes because of her welcoming disposition but adding some sharp edges here and there due to her free, volatile nature.



After this first stage, I get feedback on what elements of the silhouettes are to be kept as well as any additions I created when playing around with different ideas that are liked by the team. One of these added elements was the smoke pipe. With these notes, I go straight into designing the details for the outfit. In the design document it is specified that she is supposed to be dressed in attire based from ancient civilizations which tend to rely on the overall shape of fabric pieces and how they are pinned in place versus tight-fit, complicated sewing patterns. When coming up with each potential design, I had different ideas of what a sweet grandmother / crazy aunt would wear. Aprons, shawls, heavy jewelry, and beads. Also adding that she is a gardener of sorts, pouches of seeds, gloves, and gardening tool belts. And lastly, she is a powerful binder that loves to create, so there should be thread, ink, and quills.

I mix and mash these different ideas that can spark inspiration for smaller details that serve a function, like an arm wrapping that doubles as a makeshift painting palette or bottles that also work as writing tools. After coming up with several designs, I send them over for feedback and with the ‘go ahead’ I finalize the outfit’s details.



A part of the Gardener’s design is a backpack she carries that contains all manner of tools she uses to create. The pack is meant to have a handmade look that I explored below; mostly messing with different constructions and shapes and then filling the pack with the cluttered chaos of unorganized tools. At this point in process, a noticeable design element on her outfit is quill shapes arranged to look like petals in a flower. I took this design and used it to inform the designs on her pack to keep a unity between it and her outfit’s design. After completing all the elements of her design, and receiving feedback, I moved on to color.



[h3]Color & Finish[/h3]

With color, I have the character’s personality inform some of the main choices. The Gardener is bright and lively but is also mysterious and chaotic. I first explored having warm colors to match her welcoming personality and then added cooler colors to contrast that warmth and hint at a darker side. Red is the main identifying color in the Gardener’s design to contrast with the blue of the Gatekeeper’s attire.



After color is approved, I then render the portrait and it is then added in game for you all to see!



Yay! Hope you all enjoyed learning about my process for the character design of the Gardener.

See you around!

The developers of Indie RPG Inkbound will remove all the in-game monetization from it at the end of this month. Starting October 27, 2023, there will no longer be any battle pass or cosmetic shop inside Inkbound. They were already quite unobtrusive, but now they're going away entirely...
Read more.

Today we are announcing that we are removing all in-game monetization from Inkbound in our next major update on October 27th, 2023.

[h2]Rationale[/h2]

It’s our goal to create games we can invest into and update beyond release. As developers we enjoy expanding our games over time, combining our creativity with community feedback to add new content and fun.

For that reason, we launched Inkbound with two in-game monetization features to support the ongoing development of the game - the Leveling Pass and the Cosmetic Shop. We tried to make these as generous and straightforward as possible while simultaneously being 100% optional, cosmetic-only, with no impact on gameplay, and with no FOMO.

However, it’s clear that industry and player sentiment is trending against the presence of these features. For that reason we are removing in-game monetization completely. Content from the existing Leveling Passes will be turned into cosmetic-only optional “supporter pack” DLCs sold on Steam. The rest of the cosmetic content will continue to be available in-game and earned via playing.

To anyone reading this who purchased anything in-game - thank you, truly. We hope you’ve enjoyed your time with Inkbound so far and we’ll do our best to release a strong 1.0 sometime next year. Anyone who has made any purchases will receive additional bonus rewards as a part of this transition as a thank you for your support.

The full details for how we will make this transition are described below. If you have any questions or feedback feel free to post them in the comments. We will be reading.

[h2]Summary of Changes[/h2]

Cosmetic Shop

1. This feature will continue to exist but the currency will only be earnable via gameplay. The “Buy Shinies” button will be removed.
   
2. The “Cosmetic Shop” will be renamed to “Cosmetic Vault”.
   
3. The in-game currency will be renamed from “Shinies” to “Vault Dust”. Your existing Shinies will be converted into Vault Dust.
   
4. If you ever bought any packs of Shinies with real money we will give you an additional 2x amount of Vault Dust. For example, if you purchased 1,000 Shinies in the past, regardless if you spent it or not, we will grant you an additional 2,000 Vault Dust.
   
5. After defeating a Guardian there will be a chance a chest will appear with a random cosmetic reward from the Cosmetic Vault that you don't already have.
   

Leveling Pass

1. The Leveling Pass feature will be fully removed.
   
2. Anyone who owned either The Story Begins premium pass or The Starship of Terrors premium pass will immediately be granted all rewards out of the premium track.
   
3. Additionally, anyone who owned either The Story Begins premium pass or The Starship of Terrors premium pass will be granted 1,000 Vault Dust for each pass they owned.
   
4. We are moving the cosmetics contained in the premium tracks into cosmetic-only optional “supporter” Steam DLCs. If you bought either of the premium Leveling Passes in the past you already own all the content in the associated DLC.
   
5. The premium outfits from The Starship of Terrors that are currently in the in-game Cosmetic Shop are going to move into the new DLC. Anyone who previously purchased one of these outfits will be fully refunded for each outfit - 1,250 Vault Dust each. (Of course you will also keep the outfit.)
   
6. If you own The Starship of Terrors premium Leveling Pass you will also be granted all of The Starship of Terrors premium outfits that are currently in the Cosmetic Shop. That way there is no need to purchase the associated DLC because you will have all the content contained within the new Starship of Terrors supporter pack DLC.
   
7. The free tracks in the existing Leveling Passes will be moved into the Cosmetic Vault and will thus still be earnable via gameplay.
   
8. Upon the release of the update there will be a new free track of rewards available to all players that are earned by leveling up. The unlocks will include various cosmetic items and Vault Dust. The UI for this has been simplified and moved into the Logbook.
   
9. At the end of each Season all seasonal free rewards will move into the Cosmetic Vault and can be earned from there. There is no FOMO. If you miss the rewards during the Season you can unlock them via Cosmetic Dust (earned by leveling up) or in the random drops after defeating a Guardian as described above.
   

We understand that this is a major change to Inkbound and that there might be some confusion around this transition. If you have any questions or feedback feel free to post them in the comments, we will be reading and responding.

I’m Albert A. from the design crew. Last time around, Brendan gave us some insight on the lore surrounding vestiges, but we haven’t talked about our actual process for making interesting mechanics for vestiges.

The simplest way to describe vestiges are equipment that grant you passive effects. Most games have this in some form, usually they grant stat bonuses to your character, or if they have a unique effect, it’s usually because they’re a rare item.

In Inkbound, we want vestiges to give you power, but our primary goal is to have different combinations of vestiges that feel and play a lot different from each other. We also want vestiges to alter how you interact with certain mechanics during combat, not just because it’s interesting, but having more mechanical interactions means more opportunities for potential synergies.That’s why for the most part, we don’t just plop a stat on a vestige and call it a day (although there are a few vestiges that only grant stats).

Internally we call the idea of distinct playstyles ‘narrowness’, where the more ‘narrow’ a vestige is, the more specific the build or playstyle that vestige can be good for. You don’t want a vestige to be too narrow, even if it’s strong, because if it’s something you rarely pick that requires very specific circumstances to be good, then it’s generally not interesting. You also don’t want a vestige to not be narrow enough, if a vestige is just too universally good, then it trivializes any other choices you have against it, which is also not interesting.

Generally, the more narrow a vestige is, the more powerful it can be, and vice versa. So the higher the rarity, the more niche vestiges can be, while giving a lot of power. ‘Epic’ is the tier with the most ‘narrow’ but strong vestiges. ‘Legendary’ vestiges also tend to be strong with a particular build, but we want to make sure that when you’re always excited to see a ‘Legendary’, which can be hard if legendaries are too narrow.



Forged Lightning Bolts is really narrow, probably our most narrow vestige in the game. There are 11 other total vestiges that allow you to Smite enemies, making this vestige only good if you have one of those.



Cultivated Harmonies is the opposite, pretty much every build can get use out of a Will discount. But unlike something that gives you Smite, or allows you to inflict Burn, this vestige doesn’t have as much potential to be improved by another vestige/stat upgrade.

Right now, there’s 200+ vestiges in the game, which is a lot!

There’s a bunch of other considerations at play for what makes a ‘good’ vestige in terms of our design goals, so I’ll just list them out.

• Should try making it not be too strong on its own, but being able to imagine how strong it could be with other combinations of vestiges.
  
• Should try to work with a mechanic that is underutilized or we would like to see more of (I’m looking at you Bleed).
  
• Should try to tie in the mechanic with the vestige theme/lore, or vice-versa.
  

We’ve narrowed down the kinds of effects we want vestiges to do, now we need to narrow it down further based on what we can do.

For example, right now we don’t have the capability to add in a vestige effect like, “On turn start, charm a random Enemy for a turn. That Enemy will attack other enemies this turn.” Not only do we just not have the tools for Enemies to switch teams, we also wouldn’t want to open that can of worms, since it would have a drastic amount of design and technical repercussions:

• Enemies and players are designed to have different stat blocks. Enemies can deal single digit number attacks, but have multi-digit number HPs. Players are the opposite. We’d need to scale charmed enemy stats somehow.
  
• The AI system wasn’t built to work with the expectation that units could switch sides mid-combat. There can be several instances in code where the AI makes use of the guarantee that its targets are players, and this would break those.
  
• It should be clear in just a single glance which enemies are or are not on your team. A status effect icon over their head wouldn’t be enough, so we would need to figure out a way to communicate that UI-wise.
  

It’s not that charming enemies couldn’t be fun, I think it would be pretty neat. But there’s definitely some more mechanics we can think of that would probably be more interesting and involve a lot less investment.

So what tools do we have to make vestiges? Well vestiges are essentially status effects, which have 3 big components.

• Stats (Ability Power, Physical Power, etc)
  
• Procs (On turn start, On hitting, etc)
  
• Actions (Deal damage, restore health, etc).

Whenever making interesting effects, it’s usually with Procs and Actions. And when we’re talking about creating new mechanics, we’re usually talking about adding Procs or adding functionality to Actions. Procs are ‘when something happens’, and actions are ‘what happens’.

List of procs

Given these tools, and an outline of the design goals for vestiges, the process of actually making a new vestige usually falls in line to one of these processes

• You have a broad mechanical idea like “deal more damage when you’re low health”.
  
• You have a theme idea for an item, like a “magic pen” or a “possessed book”, and try to find a mechanical way to express that.
  
• You’re playing proc + action ‘mad-libs’ for any interesting combinations that haven’t been covered yet, or for any mechanics that are underutilized.
  

And then you put it in the game!

So, that’s all about vestiges. I hope y’all enjoyed this deep dive, see you in the Atheneum!