Inked Review

In 2014, an internet comic by the name of Grant Snider listed the types of conflict in literature, such as Man vs. Nature and Man vs. Man. Any English major learned these, of course, but the comic also added a list of post-modern conflicts like Man vs. Technology and Man vs. Reality, conflicts that only would have emerged recently with our more modern (or rather, postmodern) literature trends. The final conflict on the grid is “Man vs. Author,” an intriguing concept that I hadn’t seen explored fully...until I played Inked.

Inked is the maiden voyage, so to speak, of Croatian developer Somnium Games, and it’s a worthy first offering. What starts out as a seemingly ordinary storybook turns into a story of vengeance and loss in which the player must guide the game’s nameless protagonist to get revenge against their own creator.

Story-wise, Inked is a difficult game to review, because my first instinct as a reviewer is to avoid spoilers...but a lot of the game’s story could be considered spoilers. Even the idea that the game’s main antagonist is the “author” could be considered such a spoiler, so you’ll pardon me if details of the game’s story are a bit sparse in this review. Allow me to simply say that, while a bit forced, perhaps even hackneyed at times, it is clever, heart-felt, and relatable to anyone who’s ever experienced tragedy or loss.

In order to progress through the game, the player must create simple shapes and, eventually, more complex objects to solve puzzles. You’ll start out creating cubes to weigh down pressure blocks and eventually work your way up to creating wind blocks to push little sailboats, or fire to burn away brambles.

The puzzles, with few exceptions, are cleverly crafted and intuitive, and there were few times that I ever got stuck to the point that I had to actually quit and get away from the game and clear my head.

Of course, like most games, Inked isn’t perfect. The story, while powerful for the most part, comes across as a bit forced and fallacious at first - the idea that the protagonist has any power to combat his creator seems to be tainted by the fact that the protagonist himself is a creation of the antagonist. Any power he has is given to him by his creator and, as demonstrated later in the game, can be just as easily taken away. Of course, this is, at times, seemingly explained away by the volatile and shattered psyche of the creator who may, in fact, want to lose.

Inked’s story is highly symbolic, and by the end of the game, its strange narrative choices tend to make sense more than they don’t, you just have to trust that the team’s story is cohesive and stick it out.

Some of the game’s flaws are more mechanically-oriented: it can be somewhat difficult to place objects exactly where you want them at times, making some of the game’s challenges more difficult than they need to be.

The game’s voice acting, too, is hit and miss. For the most part, the voice you hear most often, that of Adam, the creator, is fine, but the few times you hear other voice actors in the game, they sound a bit like they’re just phoning it in and reading (poorly) from a script rather than truly delivering the lines.

My biggest complaint is that, at times, the game’s checkpoints seem a bit far apart, meaning you’ll need to try the same frustrating sections over and over again. The game’s save points too are fairly spread out, meaning that you might find yourself playing longer than you’d anticipated (or than you’d like) in order to get to the next save point so you can put the game down for awhile.

But when faced with the game’s successes - its clever premise, powerful narrative (flawed though it may seem at times), and enjoyable mechanics - Inked’s flaws come across as mostly minor nitpicks. The experience will last you a dozen hours, a fair length for a $20 game, and to anyone who has suffered trauma and loss, the narrative may, I hope, resonate and give some hope.