Bay-Area developers Shiny Shoe announced their second game today, a tactics-based RPG called Inkbound. Set for an Early Access release in 2023, Inkbound takes place in an alternate dimension called the Atheneum, which brings anything written in ink to life. Described as a “living game”, Inkbound’s Steam page emphasizes the changeability of player experience the game offers, promising that players will “craft powerful character builds in procedurally generated runs and battle your way past the inky hordes with a unique active battle system”.
Shiny Shoe’s first game Monster Train, which released in 2020, is a card battler in which players fill a train car with units in order to protect their train’s “pyre”. It garnered comparisons to the acclaimed card game Slay the Spire, which was widely praised for its combination of dungeon crawling elements and deckbuilding. This combination is one that more recent games like Dicey Dungeons and Roguebook have adopted, and Monster Train has generally been considered one of the more successful examples of this new deckbuilding subgenre, winning PC Gamer’s “Best Card Game of 2020” award, among others.
Although it’s not a card game, Inkbound, like Monster Train, is a roguelike, and it will be necessary to complete multiple runs to unlock equipment and progress. In a change for the studio, Inkbound will also include online multiplayer elements, although it’s not fully an MMO. The game’s site describes it as “a multiplayer co-op roguelike”, though it seems that single-player will be an option as well. You can visit the site to sign up for beta access before the Early Access release next year.