Inkbound 1.0 Is Out Now and We’ve Got a Q&A with Shiny Shoe

Wccftech recently met with the developers at Shiny Shoe at GDC 2024 to check out their upcoming roguelike, Inkbound. What makes this title so unique is approaching a roguelike dungeon together with friends in turn-based combat, something that’s been attempted in numerous action roguelikes but turn-based combat is still a rarity in the growing genre. Sitting alongside a couple of the core developers on the project, Wccftech got an advanced look at Inkbound ahead of the 1.0 launch that just went live on Steam.

With Inkbound intended to be a social adventure, having a Hub world seemed like a no-brainer for the project. Between runs, players can jump into a shared community to show off their style and unlock with other players. The initial base of operations is set to include 20 individual players, but as the developers explained, it’s about always being able to see those you’re partied up within the hub. That twenty-player cap is only a soft cap, as the team explains that it can also be twenty individual parties of four players and well, it can be a lot to handle and might even make the lobby experience lag a bit but the support is already there. Adventuring with friends around the globe in Inkbound should also be somewhat accessible with text language support for Chinese, Japanese, German and French (only English audio at this time, though). For those who don’t want a social experience, the entire adventure can be played offline. Shiny Shoe is still working on interchanging the two modes to allow players to start a character offline and bring them online. That alone should be good news for the Steam Deck owners out there. Unfortunately, there aren’t any current plans for LAN support for players who might sync up on a plane together and will instead have to wait until they get access to the Internet to play online together.

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