A look back and to the future of Inkbound with the Creative Director
Hello Inkbound fans!
If you’ve visited our weekly streams you’re probably well aware of who I am (and if you haven’t stopped by our streams, you should!). That said, my name is Andrew Krausnick and I’m the Creative Director here at Shiny Shoe. What that means is I’m generally responsible for developing with our team a unified creative vision that we are all working towards, and that as we create, playtest, and gather feedback on our games that we update that vision and continue to work towards creating the best possible games for you all to play.
In this blog post, as we head towards our upcoming 1.0 launch, I wanted to spend a little time looking at where we started, where we are now, and where we’re headed.
Where we started
Inkbound as a project was born out of a desire to create a new type of roguelike that married multiplayer, tactics, and creating incredibly broken builds. Of course that’s no small task, and of all projects I’ve worked on this has been the one that has faced the most iteration and challenges. Some that we expected and many we didn’t!
For us as a studio it was our first multiplayer game, our first time trying out alternative monetization ideas, and as far as we know the combat system is one of a kind.
Some of our initial ideas paid off - I’m very pleased with how our combat system can feel fast and reactive in multiplayer. And some of those ideas had to go (nobody seems sad that we no longer have a battle pass). Other ideas came to us along the way, as methods to further enhance core ideas. Such as the impact and appearance of Vestige Sets in the most recent update.
One of my favorite things to do at launches is to look back at some of the earliest screenshots of a project. Here are a few I pulled out of the depths of my hard drive (it’s like looking at baby pictures - a little ugly and a little cute?)
The oldest screenshot on my hard drive. The original ‘biter’ is about to chomp.
A real world exists! Also we had equipment with abilities on it. Also an inventory that was persistent (between runs!). Trying out a lot of ideas here. Chat is 20% of the screen.
The Inklings exist! Also we have resource bars, experience points, and abilities. We had arcing attack lines from enemies in real space at this point.
The first figments, also the combat arena works at this point and enemy variety is ramping up.
The first augment drafts. They had bonus effects at the time! Everyone just always chose the bonus effect ones though. More of a level up system and less mix and match.
[h3]Where we are now[/h3]
We’ve grown a great community, iterated heavily, added languages, controller support, and much more with this upcoming update. The narrative is voiced and there’s a payoff at the end. There’s a ton of balance changes that will make the game more engaging and rewarding than ever, with more tough choices and big wins (and close losses!). In short, our launch brings basically a whole new game. The launch is incredibly exciting and the amount of changes and polish is staggering - I genuinely can’t wait until it’s in all of your hands.
[h3]What we see in the future![/h3]
And of course looking at the above screenshots I can’t help but wonder if by the time we’re at 2.0 if the current game will look just as old. So what’s next? To a large degree that’s up to all of you and all of our new fans! We look forward to hearing from you all on what you’d like to see.
Of course we have a few aspects we’ve been cooking up, a variety of new Bindings, as well as a range of discussions about how we can expand the game even further. What game modes could we introduce? What about more unique book effects, or even books themselves? Let us know in the comments what you’d love to see and we’ll hopefully be talking about all of that very soon!
If you’ve visited our weekly streams you’re probably well aware of who I am (and if you haven’t stopped by our streams, you should!). That said, my name is Andrew Krausnick and I’m the Creative Director here at Shiny Shoe. What that means is I’m generally responsible for developing with our team a unified creative vision that we are all working towards, and that as we create, playtest, and gather feedback on our games that we update that vision and continue to work towards creating the best possible games for you all to play.
In this blog post, as we head towards our upcoming 1.0 launch, I wanted to spend a little time looking at where we started, where we are now, and where we’re headed.
Where we started
Inkbound as a project was born out of a desire to create a new type of roguelike that married multiplayer, tactics, and creating incredibly broken builds. Of course that’s no small task, and of all projects I’ve worked on this has been the one that has faced the most iteration and challenges. Some that we expected and many we didn’t!
For us as a studio it was our first multiplayer game, our first time trying out alternative monetization ideas, and as far as we know the combat system is one of a kind.
Some of our initial ideas paid off - I’m very pleased with how our combat system can feel fast and reactive in multiplayer. And some of those ideas had to go (nobody seems sad that we no longer have a battle pass). Other ideas came to us along the way, as methods to further enhance core ideas. Such as the impact and appearance of Vestige Sets in the most recent update.
One of my favorite things to do at launches is to look back at some of the earliest screenshots of a project. Here are a few I pulled out of the depths of my hard drive (it’s like looking at baby pictures - a little ugly and a little cute?)
The oldest screenshot on my hard drive. The original ‘biter’ is about to chomp.
A real world exists! Also we had equipment with abilities on it. Also an inventory that was persistent (between runs!). Trying out a lot of ideas here. Chat is 20% of the screen.
The Inklings exist! Also we have resource bars, experience points, and abilities. We had arcing attack lines from enemies in real space at this point.
The first figments, also the combat arena works at this point and enemy variety is ramping up.
The first augment drafts. They had bonus effects at the time! Everyone just always chose the bonus effect ones though. More of a level up system and less mix and match.
[h3]Where we are now[/h3]
We’ve grown a great community, iterated heavily, added languages, controller support, and much more with this upcoming update. The narrative is voiced and there’s a payoff at the end. There’s a ton of balance changes that will make the game more engaging and rewarding than ever, with more tough choices and big wins (and close losses!). In short, our launch brings basically a whole new game. The launch is incredibly exciting and the amount of changes and polish is staggering - I genuinely can’t wait until it’s in all of your hands.
[h3]What we see in the future![/h3]
And of course looking at the above screenshots I can’t help but wonder if by the time we’re at 2.0 if the current game will look just as old. So what’s next? To a large degree that’s up to all of you and all of our new fans! We look forward to hearing from you all on what you’d like to see.
Of course we have a few aspects we’ve been cooking up, a variety of new Bindings, as well as a range of discussions about how we can expand the game even further. What game modes could we introduce? What about more unique book effects, or even books themselves? Let us know in the comments what you’d love to see and we’ll hopefully be talking about all of that very soon!