Inkborn News

📜 Inkborn Early Access Roadmap - what’s next?

Inkborns, your journey through our game is just beginning! In what’s to come, you can expect two major milestones:

⚔️ Firstly, expect Difficulty Levels: Whether you want a more relaxed run or a brutal test of your deckbuilding skills, new difficulty options will let you tailor the challenge to your taste. Expect Soulink as reward and bragging rights for braving the harder settings.

🌌 Then, heading straight for the 3rd Act: A whole new chapter awaits - a fresh environment filled with never-before-seen enemies, treacherous paths, and a climactic finale to push your strategies to the limit.

[h3] ⚒️ Content coming to Inkborn[/h3]

Two New Hero Classes: Each bringing unique mechanics, playstyles, and thematic decks to explore.
New Enemies and Bosses: More dangerous foes to test your evolving strategies.
More Cards for the 1st Hero Class: Expand your arsenal with fresh options and synergies.
More Combo combinations: Unlock new layers of strategy as you experiment with expanded card interactions.
Extended Skill Tree: More skills to master for the 1st Hero Class, adding depth to progression.
Another wave of Quotes: New words of wisdom and power to enhance the expedition.
Difficulty Modifiers: Spice up each run with new modifiers that twist the rules in creative ways.

[h3] 🎮 Planned gameplay features [/h3]

Expanded Book of Thoughts: Integrating a Bestiary filled with lore, enemy details, and story connections.
Bestiary metaprogression: Unlock bonuses and insights as you encounter and study more creatures.
Chronicle Curses expansion: Introducing Cursed Quotes and Instant Curses for more variety in run-altering effects.
Story-related Quests: Undertake story that unveil new chapters of Inkborn’s tapestry, revealing long-lost truths and hidden histories, while granting rare rewards to aid your quest.
Multi-stage events: Longer, more dynamic encounters with evolving challenges and outcomes.
Quest-like cards: A fresh card type functioning similarly to story quests, adding tactical objectives mid-run.

[h3] ✨ Quality of Life improvements [/h3]

Adjustable animation speed: Play at your pace, choose slower cinematic animations or fast-forward for rapid action.
Better animation timing: Smoother, more natural flow to in-game actions.
Fine-tuned visual notifications & pop-ups: Clearer feedback so you always know what’s happening.
Player Profiles: Track your progress and play history, manage multiple metaprogression profiles within a single copy of the game. Gain access to upcoming features through the Beta Profile.
Visual progression of buildings: See your City evolve and grow as you play.
Optimized performance & faster loading: Reduced waiting times for better, uninterrupted play.

This is just the beginning and many surprises still lie ahead. We’ll keep sharing details, sneak peeks, and updates on Steam and in our Discord community server. We’d love to hear what kind of content you’d like to see, your thoughts on what should come first, and any suggestions you have for Inkborn’s future. This roadmap isn’t set in stone, we’re building it together with you. 👀

The pages of your story are still being written… ink your legacy. ✒️

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2924580/Inkborn/?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=roadmap_announcement
P.S.
✨ You can also find Inkborn at Gamescom 2025 - find us in Hall 10.2 | Stand F031g, where you can play the game and get a look at our paper-crafted deckbuilding adventure! 😀

[h2]❤️ Stay close to Us ❤️[/h2]
【𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙲𝙾𝚁𝙳】💬 https://discord.gg/UytR7dgwtx .
【𝙵𝙰𝙲𝙴𝙱𝙾𝙾𝙺】📰 https://www.facebook.com/acramdigital .
【X】🦾 https://x.com/acramdigital .
【𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙰𝙼】🕹️ https://store.steampowered.com/dev/Acram/ .
【𝚈𝙾𝚄𝚃𝚄𝙱𝙴】🎞️ https://www.youtube.com/@acramdigital6748 .
【𝙸𝙽𝚂𝚃𝙰𝙶𝚁𝙰𝙼】📷 https://www.instagram.com/acramdigital/ .

Early Access v0.3.1 Hotfix #1

Hello Inkborns, with the release of version 0.3.1 and the new Endless Mode, we discovered a pesky loading screen hiccup. We’ve tracked it down and fixed it, and the Hotfix is now live. This issue shouldn’t happen anymore, but if you do run into it, you’ll only lose progress from your current run, not your overall profile.

We’re sorry for any disruption this caused. The version number remains unchanged, but the loading issue affecting some save files has been resolved. Here’s a quick word from our Developer:

Hi everyone,

My name is Piotr, though I usually go by my nickname: Pindwin. I lead the technical side of Inkborn’s development, and I thought you might find it interesting to learn what this hotfix is about.

Working on an Early Access title comes with many challenges, and one of the biggest is maintaining backward compatibility while releasing updates, some of which change how your game save is structured. With every update, we need to be extremely careful not to break existing saves. Normally, that’s something you do every few months - not every few days! To stay safe, we built automated systems that compare old saves with new ones, tests that try updating the game save mechanically, and so on. These have worked flawlessly, until now.

And that’s because there’s another challenge in Early Access: rapid change. Last week, when we released Endless Mode, we fell into a trap of our own making, related to how we handle save files. So how did this happen despite all our checks? The short answer: a fixed buffer size.

Inkborn uses a binary save format: each game entity is packed in memory as tightly as possible. Your cards, quotes and ideas, the generated map and shop content - all of that gets an identifier, which we later use to write and recognize the whole card. For example, Greatnib has an identifier of 5, so when we save Greatnib-related info, we don’t write the whole card, we just take 5 as a starting point and apply changes from there. The process is a little more complex, but you get the idea.

This approach keeps even large decks very compact, which makes the game load faster and run smoothly. But—yes, there’s a “but”. This whole process uses a buffer. Think of it like a trolley you use to carry items into storage: you fill the trolley, unload it, and repeat.

In our case, the buffer organizes the save file (the “storage room” in this example). We fill it with different types of items: cards, quotes, enemies, and write them to the file one type at a time. We calculated that even if a player maxed out the entire game, a 4KB buffer would be enough for each item type. So we hardcoded it to use 4,096 bytes of RAM as that trolley.

And then came Endless Mode.

One of the most memory-consuming things we store in a save is statistics. We use them for balance: if a card overperforms or underperforms, we know where to adjust. For ease of analysis, this is one place where we store the names of cards, not just numbers - so the data is easy to read on graphs. One of these stats is every card a player picked during a run. Stored in a memory-heavy way. In a run that can now go endlessly...

Boom. That’s the buffer overflowing-cutting off the card name mid-save. The result? Corrupted saves, which usually show up as combat not ending and the game failing to return to the journey map. If you try to load that save, the game crashes and gets stuck on loading.

The fix? Allow the buffer to grow if needed (from my experience, this happens around Endless 5). Unfortunately, it also means removing some of your old Endless runs.

This probably isn’t the last odd issue caused by unexpected interactions, but we’ll do our best to keep them unnoticeable. ;) I hope sharing their origin stories makes for an interesting read. :)

~Piotr (Pindwin)

[h2]❤️ Stay close to Us ❤️[/h2]
【𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙲𝙾𝚁𝙳】💬 https://discord.gg/UytR7dgwtx .
【𝙵𝙰𝙲𝙴𝙱𝙾𝙾𝙺】📰 https://www.facebook.com/acramdigital .
【X】🦾 https://x.com/acramdigital .
【𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙰𝙼】🕹️ https://store.steampowered.com/dev/Acram/ .
【𝚈𝙾𝚄𝚃𝚄𝙱𝙴】🎞️ https://www.youtube.com/@acramdigital6748 .
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Endless Mode & Update 0.3.1 is here!

Hey Inkborns! 👋

As promised, we’re rolling out a new gameplay feature to help boost replayability while we’re hard at work delivering Difficulty Levels and Act 3. We get it, those two are highly anticipated at the moment! And while we’re busy shaping what’s next, Endless Mode is here to let you squeeze even more fun out of your carefully built decks, test your strategies, and chase some wild highscores. 🏆

[h3]♾️How Endless Mode works:[/h3]
After successfully defeating the second Act Boss, you’ll now have a choice:
→ end your run and collect all the earned score (EXP points),
→ or enter Endless Mode and continue your journey.

Each Endless cycle makes enemies stronger, increasing their Sharpness (damage) and Max HP. If you beat the Boss from Act 2 again, the same choice appears, and enemies scale up even further.

[h3]⚔️ Enemy scaling formula:[/h3]

Sharpness: +2 ^ cycle number
HP: Max HP × (1 + 0.25 × cycle number)

So the first few cycles would look like this:

Cycle 1: +2 Sharpness, Max HP × 1.25
Cycle 2: +4 Sharpness, Max HP × 1.5
Cycle 3: +8 Sharpness, Max HP × 1.75
...and so on!

[h3]🛠️ Update 0.3.1:[/h3]
Huge thanks to everyone who’s shared bugs or suggestions via Discord, the survey, or in-game. Your input helped us bring Inkborn to Early Access version 0.3.1, enjoy the latest changes:

❗ NEW FEATURES & CONTENT ❗

Introduced Endless Mode. After completing Act 2, you can now opt into Endless Mode. Enemies get sharper and tougher with each loop, but starting a new Act I will fully heal you. How long can you survive?
The Oblivion curse card has been fixed and is back in the game.
Added a smooth fade-in animation to Random Events and the Credits screen.

🌴 QUALITY OF LIFE (QoL) 🌴

Temporarily disabled the Story Event entry - it's not implemented yet, but it’s coming!

🐛 BUG FIXES 🐛

Fixed diacritics rendering in outlined fonts, special characters should now display correctly.
Prevented a softlock when opening the Draw Pile during a Search effect (e.g. when playing Ancient Shield).
Adjusted tree placement in Act I’s Journey map to improve path visibility.
Fixed game controller issues in the Card Collection screen and the Quotes panel.
Implemented various minor stability improvements.

Want to show off your skills?
Drop a screenshot of your final score on our Discord server, we’d love to see how far you’ve made it! 📸

Tried Endless Mode? We’re really curious what you think, let us know in the Thread or in the comments below! ♾️

And if you’re enjoying the game, please consider leaving us a review on Steam, it really helps! 🙌

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2924580/Inkborn/?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=hotfix031&utm_campaign=endlessmode

As a bonus, today at 19:00 CET, From Poland With Love 2025 is featured on Steam as a Weekend Deal and runs until August 11th. Inkborn is part of the lineup, so if you’re interested, you can check out the sale page here! 🛍️

[h2]❤️ Stay close to Us ❤️[/h2]
【𝙳𝙸𝚂𝙲𝙾𝚁𝙳】💬 https://discord.gg/UytR7dgwtx .
【𝙵𝙰𝙲𝙴𝙱𝙾𝙾𝙺】📰 https://www.facebook.com/acramdigital .
【X】🦾 https://x.com/acramdigital .
【𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙰𝙼】🕹️ https://store.steampowered.com/dev/Acram/ .
【𝚈𝙾𝚄𝚃𝚄𝙱𝙴】🎞️ https://www.youtube.com/@acramdigital6748 .
【𝙸𝙽𝚂𝚃𝙰𝙶𝚁𝙰𝙼】📷 https://www.instagram.com/acramdigital/ .

Inkborn is a part of From Poland With Love 2025! 💌🎮

We’re super happy that Inkborn is participating in From Poland With Love 2025 on Steam - a celebration of the finest games made and published in Poland, powered by Untold Tales! 💌🎮

👉 Inkborn is 10% off for a limited time, only until August 11th!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2924580/Inkborn/?utm_source=steam&utm_medium=fpwl2025
🛍️ Check out the sale page and explore deals and bundles here: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/FromPolandWithLove2025

Early Access Release Summary

Hey Inkborns!

First off, a huge thank you for your trust in us and for being so active across all our channels. We’ve been reading everything you’ve shared, from kind words to spot-on feedback and we really appreciate it. 🙏 Your involvement means a lot, and it’s already helped us spot things we can improve.

Now that we’re a few days into Early Access, we want to take a moment to sum things up. In this post, we’ll talk about:

What’s been working well.
What didn’t go quite as planned (and what we’re doing about it).
What you can expect from us soon (and a bit later down the line).
A new idea we’re exploring to make the game even more replayable.

[h2]1. What’s been working well.[/h2]

First of all, we’re just really happy to have reached this point. Launching into Early Access is a huge milestone for us and an important step on the road to version 1.0.

We’re glad to see that the paper-crafted world struck a chord with many of you. Ink is flowing, paper is flying, we’ve already put in an order for more supplies to keep things going. 😉

When it comes to stability, we’re actually feeling pretty good about where things stand. The game isn’t bug-free (yet!), but thanks to your reports, we’ve been able to track down and patch some of the nastier ones pretty fast. First hotfixes are already live, and we’re keeping an eye out for anything else that needs squashing.

We’ve seen a lot of you put in a good number of hours already. 💪 That’s been amazing to watch. Keep hunting down those combos, quoting the literary greats, and slicing through the layers of enemies on your path to victory!

[h2]2. What didn’t go quite as planned (and what we’re doing about it).[/h2]

Not everything went the way we hoped. Some of you mentioned that the game doesn’t offer enough hours of gameplay yet, and yeah, we hear you. We're already working on ways to change that (more on this in a moment).

We also messed up with regional pricing. In the rush of release, we didn’t catch the issue early enough, and some of you ended up paying more than you should have. What made it worse is that after playing for over 2 hours, Steam wouldn’t let you refund and re-buy the game at the new, lower price. That’s on us, and we want to make it right. If this happened to you, head over to this thread, we’ll walk you through the steps to get it sorted.

[h2]3. What you can expect from us soon (and a bit later down the line).[/h2]

Right now, we’re doing our best to answer your questions and go through all the feedback you’re sending our way. And we’ve got to say, your posts and discussions are incredibly constructive and full of sharp observations. 💪 Please keep them coming!

We owe you a proper roadmap, and yes, it’s on the way! We’ll share it as soon as we can. But we also don’t want to leave you hanging with just a “coming soon” message. Based on what we’re seeing, two things are absolutely key for making your experience more complete:

Adding Act 3.
Introducing new systems to boost replayability and raise the challenge.

Act 3 is a major task, especially since we’re sticking to our "no shortcuts" approach when it comes to visuals and quality. But we know how important it is, it’s our top long-term priority. We're currently revisiting our internal schedule to see if we can shift some features around to get Act 3 into your hands sooner. As soon as we’ve got something solid, you’ll be the first to know.

As for replayability and tougher challenges, we’ve decided to speed things up. Originally, difficulty levels were meant to arrive together with Act 3. But since it’s clear how important they are to you, we’re moving that up. We’re aiming to introduce difficulty levels by late August or early September.

So, how will they work?

Once you complete your first full 2-act run, you’ll unlock the difficulty system. It’s built around modifiers, you pick which ones to enable, each adding a new twist to the challenge. Each modifier comes with a point value, and together they determine your total difficulty score.

💥And here's the twist: difficulty levels will also tie into your city’s development. Right now, beating a boss for the first time gives you Soulink. With difficulty levels, each completed run at a new difficulty will reward additional Soulink, letting you unlock more City upgrades❗

Since we’re fast-tracking some of these features, we’re also going to add a new Beta Profile option in-game. That’s where difficulty levels (and possibly other early features) will land first. This way, your main profile stays untouched and keeps progressing at its original pace, while you can jump into the beta profile to try out what’s next.

[h2]4. A new idea we’re exploring to make the game even more replayable.[/h2]

We came up with an idea that might help make up for the lack of new acts until Act 3 is ready, an Endless Mode. Endless Mode will let you enjoy a carefully crafted deck and quote combos for much longer. After finishing Act 2, the game would let you jump straight into another loop of the run (with a visit to the city in between) to test yourself against stronger versions of enemies.

If that sounds like your kind of fun, we’re already working on getting Endless Mode ready, maybe as soon as next week. And if you’re into the idea, we might even add weekly leaderboards in the future, so you can see who lasts the longest in this endless challenge.

We're curious what you make of the idea. Think it’s worth it? Let us know in the thread, your take really helps us decide what to focus on next. We could even tie Endless Mode together with the difficulty levels we mentioned earlier. Be sure to tell us if that would be something you'd find interesting!

In short:

Your feedback really gives us wings!
We know we made some mistakes, and we're fixing them.
Difficulty levels will be added within the next month.
We shared the idea of Endless Mode, if you like it, we plan to launch it next week, but we need your feedback first.
While you’re enjoying the new difficulty levels and (hopefully!) Endless Mode, we’ll be working on the Roadmap and Act 3.

Thank you for being with us, it truly means a lot!

Here’s a little sneak peek of what’s coming 😉