Inkbound News

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!

Hi, Inklings!

This is the first of the weekly sneak peeks leading up to Inkbound’s Next Major Update on October 27, 2023!

This week, the sneak peek is about the Vestige Sets!



Vestige Sets are an exciting new game feature that will allow you to unlock powerful themed bonuses. Replacing the Run Quests, a player’s goal shifts towards considering the pros and cons of unlocking higher vestige tiers by choosing from the same set or diversifying your vestige arsenal.

To see specific examples of Vestige Sets, you can do so in one (or both) of the following ways:
1. Join me for the Friday stream on October 6th, at 12:00 PM PT on Twitch!
2. Sign up for the Inkbound newsletter!

I hope you’re just as excited as I am for the Major Update! See the updated roadmap here to check out the full list of upcoming new content and changes.

Thank you so much for supporting the Shiny Shoe team and for playing Inkbound! If you have any questions, you can ask them here on Discord.

See you in the Atheneum!
~Cami
Community Manager at Shiny Shoe

[h2]Letter from the Team[/h2]

This update fixes a few reported issues and further weakens Nim.

[h2]Release Timing[/h2]

This patch will be released at approximately 10 am PT (UTC-7) on October 4th, 2023.

This link will convert that to your local time.

[h2]Full Patch Notes[/h2]

[h3]General & Quests[/h3]

1. Fixed issue where the Worn Millstone given by Challenge Tier 17 would be re-added after reviving.
   
2. Fixed issue where dynamic Vestige stats would not be re-added to a player when reviving after death and combat victory.
   
3. Fixed costed heal interactables costing less when reduced.
   
4. Updated the Roadmap link on the main menu to the new roadmap.
   

[h3]Enemies[/h3]

1. Reduced Nim's power even further in Book 1.
   

Hi, everyone!

It’s roadmap time! Since we published our first early access roadmap, we’ve set new goals for Inkbound that we wanted to share with you, our amazing players. Below, you’ll find a detailed list of what we are currently working on as well as some future updates to look forward to.

And speaking of the next major update, we’re so happy to announce that the Next Major Update is planned for October 27, 2023! We look forward to you joining us for its launch!


Click the above image for a larger version.

A text version of the same information follows.

[h2]Next Major Update[/h2]
[h3]October 2023[/h3]

• Two new Aspects
  
• Vestige Set Bonuses
  
• Revamped Bosses
  
• Steam Achievements
  
• Game Balance 2.0
  
• Updated Sea Breaches
  
• Updated Rank System
  
• More Daily Challenge Mutators
  
• Trinket Updates
  

[h3]The Future:[/h3]

• More Aspects
  
• Controller Support
  
• The Full Story - Explore the Scribe’s story.
  
• Steam Deck Support
  
• Localization
  
• More Earnable Cosmetics
  
• Improved accessibility
  
• Another Villain
  
• Vestige Lore Unlocks
  
• Stat tracking - record your all-time bests
  

And much, much more!

As always, thank you so much for your support of Shiny Shoe and Inkbound! You are the best and, if you haven’t already, say ‘Hi’ to me if you see me in the game!

See you in the Atheneum!
~Cami
Community Manager at Shiny Shoe