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When you start this game, you are dragged along the floor by a large, mysterious creature. When this blue-eyed creature greets you from the shadows, telling you we’re going to play a game, it bears an uncanny resemblance to Inscryption’s first chapter. This is perhaps everyone’s favorite part of Inscryption, the grim atmosphere, playing a game of life or death with an unknown creature that narrates your encounters in their game. Inkshade successfully captures that feeling of being trapped with an entity that treats this situation with the same callous amusement as someone pulling the wings off flies.
Forced to play a tabletop strategy game, you’re the Captain, and you’re amassing a crew to get everything you need to explore the Abyss to the north. You start with a lowly wretch, where you’re introduced to a battle you’ll inevitably lose. After that, you’re told to search for more minis and try again. You can interact with everything on the ship, and sometimes, you find switches that open hidden compartments with more crew minis. Each mini’s a different class, with various stats, including health, attack power, speed, attack range, etc, and are upgradeable. Later, you’ll find minis that come with other abilities you won’t know about until you fight them. Each class of mini has a simple, adorable, but also grim design. The Lycanthrope mini is one of the few models that features eyes. It has a big wolf head with frazzled fur, long teeth, and a ravenous stare.
The game world’s a diorama and the creature narrates your journey with the macabre enthusiasm of a malicious DM. When you choose your direction, you’re given a simple exploration map with branching routes that lead to encounters, shops, and treasure. Then combat opens and you’re treated to beautiful dioramas! Each map is sequential, with some variations on what map you’ll encounter in this sequence. In one run, I fought hunters outside a lodge, but in another run, this map was replaced with an ambush at night! Enemy mini placement is deliberate for every map. In a city map I found villagers inside residences, undead in graveyards and what felt like a crime syndicate behind barricades with bidents, rifles and arrows. They killed villager minis outside their houses and blocked off the graveyard. Some wait in shadowed alleys to ambush you.
At several points, you’ll step away from the table and explore your surroundings. There’s a creeping dread when you’re turning over the carnage and unraveling puzzles. You’ll see lights in statue eyes, see things skitter through cracks in the wall, and everywhere you’ll find black ink. You know you’re observed by the creature, seeing those blue eyes in halls or the top of stairs. At times, this creature can appear both wondrous and horrifying, stringing you along, letting you reflect on what you discover. You’ll piece everything together the closer you get to finishing the board game; causing greater uncertainty about what happens when you win.
The game doesn’t play music too often besides what you might find from the phonographs wandering around, or briefly at the start of standard encounters, but I remember it vividly during boss encounters and the climax. Moving minis around has the light tap of wood on wood, and when they’re smacking each other around with clubs, you hear a funny but delightful knock before they explode violently in ink. Magic’s often subdued unless the spell’s coming from a higher-tier caster. Some strikes shocked me with the violence of their hits. Wandering around, you’ll hear creaking wood, skittering between the walls, and another strange sound I couldn’t identify, which will also play during the board. Not sure if it was supposed to be scary, but I found it more disruptive.
This game does suffer a few faults. It can feel too dark when you’re exploring your environment, even when your character occasionally pulls out the lamp, which can leave you lost or missing things. One puzzle was trickier to figure out than the others because you have to move away from the controls, walk around the balcony, and get the right angle to line up the stars. If I didn’t check discussions, I doubt I’d figure this out. As for the board game portion, the simplicity is both a blessing and a curse. Most units don’t have special abilities, and the only differences lie in their stats. Some people might find the battles repetitive, since the only difference between many units is their stats. There’s nothing to remind you which models have unique abilities, like healing or bypassing walls. Some units are also extremely niche. One unit can have 6 magic attack and 8 speed, but only gets 3 health at most and no defense. Enemies possess 2 or 3 attack power, are close enough to cover each other’s backs. You could instantly lose this higher-tier unit to a lower-tier unit with 2 attack power.
Other than these observations, I enjoyed Inkshade! The strategy game is simple in its design, but it becomes complex when trying to capitalize on enemy weaknesses. The game looks wonderful at and away from the table. The sounds are creepy, the music forlorn. Some puzzles could be frustrating, and if you’re looking for a strategy game with special abilities, you’ll not find it here, so for some audiences it could make encounters feel repetitive. However if you’re looking for a game with an unsettling but charming atmosphere, while hovering over wonderful wood crafted set pieces and constructing a crew from over 30 pieces to match your theme or playstyle, you’ll enjoy this game!
