It’s me, Redbeard/Brendan, writer of Inkbound, back with another Lore Post! There have been some great questions on the
Inkbound Discord (shameless plug to join if you haven’t!) about the origin of Inkbound’s world and, with the full release of the game, there’s no better time to dive into the details!
[h3]The Concept
[/h3]
I can’t really pinpoint when the idea of “Books as Worlds” came about — it was something I’d been interested in for a while — but it definitely pre-dated even Monster Train. But, since nothing is made in a vacuum, and especially since this thing has been made and released, it’s a lot easier to retroactively find inspirations and make it look like I knew what I was doing all along!
Whether conscious or not, there were 2 main inspirations for the world of Inkbound: The Pagemaster and The Nightmare Before Christmas. For anyone who’s seen The Pagemaster, the Macauley Culkin classic of the 90’s, the connection to Inkbound should be pretty clear. But, for those who haven’t, know that books coming alive and transporting our favorite child actor into their worlds was a pretty central idea of that movie.
For the Nightmare Before Christmas, the inspiration was a bit more specific. I was always obsessed with the holiday-door woods where each door leads to a different world centered around that holiday. The doors and the worlds they could lead to were intriguing, of course, but I was really curious about the larger forest that contained all these doors and this sort of 'meta-world' that connected all of it. Where could all of these other doors lead? Were there people or beings that lived in this greater wood and took care of the doors? If Jack fell (or, I guess, trans-dimensionally transported?) into Christmastown, how the hell did he ever get out so easily?
So, the idea of a book being personified somehow, whether that was into a character or a world (or both!) was hardly a new one, but it felt like it’s such an interesting and obvious idea that could bear the weight of the ‘big thing’ we were working on creating after Monster Train.
[h3]The World [/h3]
Way, way back in the olden days of 2020 when we were still working on Monster Train, we’d finally started to think about what we wanted to do next and with that came a couple of high-level ‘requirements’ for what we wanted the game world to accomplish:
- We wanted something with a strong “meta” component. Something that would tie all of the individual pieces together in a compelling enough way that also created a main hub space for everyone to hang out in. In the game now, this is the Atheneum.
- We wanted a world that was “infinitely” expandable. Even more specifically, a world where we could tell a wide variety of different kinds of stories and it made sense for those stories to exist within the same world.
Again, it’s easy to retroactively fit the narrative to match the outcome, but the ideas rattling around my head for “Books as Worlds” and this meta-world where they all exist seemed to lend themselves perfectly to these higher-level goals we’d set for ourselves in making whatever this new thing was going to be. So, the Atheneum and all of its Book worlds created in Ink with the help of some spiritual companion were formally conceived. All that was left was the writing…
[h3]The Writing[/h3]
…and that’s the hard part. Ideas? Easy! You can come up with a hundred in just a couple of minutes if you really try for it. But fleshing out all the details of those ideas, and there are a lot of details… not so much. You’ve got to think of all the things that people will never (and rightfully should never) see! Reasons for why enemies wear specific kinds of textiles and where those textiles were made. Reasons for what kind of food people ate and why it was a huge source of conflict in this world. Reasons for why Kwills speak in that weird language that they do and why it looks the way that it does. There exists, somewhere in the dusty depths of a Google Drive folder, an actual Inkbound “Bible” that’s a few hundred pages long and details all of the inner workings of the Inkbound universe. It’s long, it’s tedious, it’s self-contradicting, and it’s wildly out of date, but having that “Bible” was crucial in making sure that the world was fleshed out enough so that when an artist asked “What does this enemy wear?”, I could respond in verbose and excruciating detail before their eyes glazed over and they regret asking in the first place.
What always held true in that “Bible”, however, were a few guiding principles around which all the other details revolved. Here’s a quick list of a few of them that I made for myself when writing the game.
- A Reclusive, Mysterious Figurehead - The Inkbound would be a figure that everyone had placed their faith in but that faith was quickly fading. Basically, take the Wizard from the Wizard of Oz and make them even more fallible.
- Dropping into the Unknown - Strange worlds with strange rules and strange reasons for existing. Each world in the game has a reason to exist, but I wanted them to have distinct purposes in their narrative creation. Take Alice and drop her into Wonderland over and over and over again.
- Believable Character Motivations - No Black and White morals! Not a new concept by any means but something I strongly believe in when writing characters. It’s always more compelling (in my opinion) to read and write characters that have believable motivations for their actions. You may not agree with them, but you can at least have some understanding as to why they did a thing.
- Kwills are Quills are Inkwills - Spiritual companions as the literal conduit for words and Ink in this world was an idea that existed from the beginning. One title we even floated around for a while was “The Inkwills” both to try and convey the importance of these Kwills (in the world, a name that comes from the shortening of Inkwill) and to communicate that this game’s story is about the Will of Ink. While the title didn’t stick around, the concept certainly did.
- Starting In Media Res - Starting “in the middle of things” rather than the very beginning of the story. By the time you actually enter the story, everything has gone to Hell! The Atheneum is in ruin, most of its inhabitants are gone, and these book worlds you keep hearing about aren’t even all around to go to! You’re cleaning up the mess of other characters. But only after you make it a little messier first.
While a lot of the details changed a few (hundred) times, these guiding principles helped to have a clear ‘North Star’ (or constellation?) to direct towards when writing out lots and lots and lots of specifics that may never see the eyes of a player.
But that’s the biggest secret to writing a world - none of it’s real until you ship it! And even then, that’s why God made retconning. So, change anything and everything as much as you want until it feels right, and then probably change it some more because you can. No one will know (unless you write a Steam blog about it).
So, that’s the real short version of a small portion of how this world was made. It’s hardly the only way to do this sort of thing, but it’s a way that’s worked for me. And whether you’ve read this far because you’re interested in making your own worlds or just curious about the thought and care that goes into them, thanks for sticking around and enjoying this weird, little world that we’ve made for you to play around in!
Silhouette studies for Shadow of Ruhnstone
The Ruhnstone environment 
Initial Shadow of Ruhnstone sketches
Color study for Shadow of Ruhnstone
Orthographic drawing of the Shadow of Ruhnstone
Final rendering of the Shadow of Ruhnstone