Inkulinati | PS5

In Inkulinati it's Tiny's versus Beasts on maniacally mapped out medieval manuscripts. Featuring roguelike turn based tactical 2D combat lightly akin to Magic the Gathering with some of history's most religiously inclined individuals as your player characters Inkulinati will have you dishing out damage as you try to best your opponent, and their armies of beastly critters. You'll find everything from demons with faces on their arse to donkey's that play the butt trumpet. Each with their own unique set of skills, weapons, and attack range. All inked like traditional manuscript art with accompanying animation. 

Using your ink well as your mana pool as well as chapter specific passive talents, and applied turn specific hand actions that will aide you in this task you'll eventually face off against the dealer of death, himself, as you draw to life an animalistic army for the ages. All as the apocalypse, in it's many forms, comes calling with it's own threat to both contestants.

Inkulinati is a lane and platform based style of tactical turn based roguelike wherein you try to protect your Tiny (a historical character if Inkulinati fame) using a limited army of beasts. These beasts come with swords, pole arms, and bows that are range and damage specific. They also come in visually different animal/fantasy/demon types and harbor a set of individually unique skills that can be used on their turn in battle. Leaving their health to be the deciding factor of life or death, failure or victory.

Depending on the battle type and mode type you will be going into the fray either against beasts only, against beasts with a spawning tent, or beasts with a Inkulinati master commanding them. Each battle type, specifically in the Journey mode, will reward you with new beasts, talents, and hand actions as well as prestige points and coins that can be spent on further unlocks back at the main menu. Adversely, and in tandem with these rewards, your recently used beasts will also rack up Boredom points which will increase their ink cost the more you use them. This incentivizes giving other beasts a try. You can, if you happen upon certain points of interest in the Journey mode, clear up these Boredom penalty points.

Journey mode, itself, is the core mode of offline play and affords the gamer a way to experience the mechanics in a roguelike map of multiple acts with multiple choice paths that each have their own rewards and challenges. That and gameplay objectives. Be it to clear out a certain number of beasts, to defeat the beasts and their spawn, or to kill the opposing Tiny before the enemy beasts kills yours. 

Along the trail of dotted lines and points of interest you'll face off against these randomized battles as well as have lucrative conversations with key characters, and even stop by shops or permanent ink wells to upgrade your arsenal going forward. All to the tune of four increasingly difficult difficulty settings. Supposing you're good enough you'll get to climb the ranks of the leaderboard by besting Death after having fulfilled the set feat requirements.

Combat is complex in Inkulinati, as you'll find out, but it is still somewhat easy to pick up on through the Academy tutorial section that goes over the basics, beginner tactics, and intermediate tactics. It is here you'll learn that your Tiny is your main character that must be defended at all costs. Like a king piece in chess it must be protected from both beasts, and the apocalyptic events that occur every five chapters in. Each chapter representing the turns taken from all beasts and Tiny's on each side. 

As the chapter begins each side will use ink points to summon their first beasts onto the platforming lanes. Every opponent has a starting ink pool/well, and can regain ink be defeating enemy beasts, or by standing on ink blots of varying sizes that reward the player with bonus ink so long that a beast occupies that spot. Aside from being able to summon the beasts each player will also be able to move them a within a certain area that will either leave them with an additional action to perform or put them into a nap status which will automatically end their turn. 

On each beasts turn their options are dependent wholly on their weapon in regards to reach, and their skills in regards to buffs or special abilities. Each beast can only move, and perform one action per turn unless a Talent or Hand Action permits them to bypass that restriction. Same goes for the Tiny whose turns are limited to movement, and beast support.

When it comes to Talents they are the passive buffs, and bonuses that will help your beasts by healing them, adding positive status effects, rewarding under specific conditions bonus ink resources, or applying stackable buffs. They are usually chapter specific. On the flipside manually applied Hand Actions are similar, but applied on a cooldown on your Tiny's turn. They become available after a set amount of beast actions. 

Aside from the perks, and basic combat mechanics there are additional options tied to certain Hand Actions, and base actions that will allow the Tiny as well as the beasts to avoid or deal added damage. This comes with certain set pieces like explosives or obstructions. The obstructions can block damage whereas things like the explosive pots can deal damage across three or more spots on the platform. There's even set pieces like the altar that have added mechanics that will buff any beast that passes it. Stacking Halo, Accuracy, and Unpushable stacks which will help improve resistances as well as help beasts dish out more damage. 

These status affects can also be applied through certain beast skills. Allowing for buffs, and even negative status effects if it involves an enemy beast. The Cat Bishop, for example, will deal bigger damage to an enemy that attacks it by cursing it with heresy. Of course there are counters to this, and they come with certain beasts that have innate immunity.

Using set pieces is not the only method to end a run though. You can push beasts and Tiny's off the edge. This will insta-kill them. Not only is there that certainty of instant death upon push, but there are Apocalyptic events that will appear each five chapters at the edges of each platform forcing the player to move their Tiny's and beasts. Not doing so in time will instantly lose them to whatever catastrophe is there. Be it Hell's Maw, or Fire ... among other things. Let me not forget the butt trumpet mechanic which is a way to negatively status effect a beast target, and put them into a prolonged nap status. Something that comes in handy when trying to avoid their approach or in negating any would be fatal damage.

In both Journey mode, and the Duel mode you can custom tailor your army of beasts, select your talents, and choose your hand actions before committing to the next battle. In Journey mode, specifically, this set of options is more limited, but in Duel mode additional options open up in the form of background theme, Tiny choice, Apocalyptic event frequency, and rewards frequency. Leaving it up to a single player versus the AI or two players locally to get medieval on each others arse in an attempt to show off who's the best. 

The Verdict ...

Inkulinati takes the lane and turn based tactical roguelike mechanics of games like Darkest Dungeons, and adds it's own twists. It incorporates inked art from medieval manuscripts for character, and creature design as well as an element of platforming unique to the traditional lane based combat. While it doesn't completely reinvent the genre it does good in offering a fully fledged offline mode with multiple difficulties as well as a local multiplayer mode with plenty of customization options, and hours worth of content available on each playthrough. 

The roguelike elements in Journey mode are, of course, Inkulinati's main saving grace though. That and the art style really changed up what we've become accustom to. I do like the blend of MTG and Darkest Dungeons mechanics as well. That and the unique twists, as I previously mentioned. If you fancy something feudal in the roguelike genre be sure to check out Inkulinati when it releases on February 22nd of this year!!!