Inkbound on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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A turn-based tactical roguelike from the creators of Monster Train. Play solo or co-op, create powerful builds, and save the Atheneum.
Inkbound is a tactical rpg, turn-based tactics and rogue-lite game
developed and published by Shiny Shoe.
Released on April 09th 2024 is available only on Windows
in 5 languages: English, French, German, Japanese and Simplified Chinese.
It has received 3,693 reviews of which 3,225 were positive and 468 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.4 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 7.49€ on Steam with a 70% discount, but you can find it for 2.34€ on Eneba.
The Steam community has classified Inkbound into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Core i3
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: IGP or better - 2 GB of VRAM
- DirectX: Version 11
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 3 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
First of all I want to lead with the fact that Inkbound is a roguelite in a weird spot. The closest comparison I can honestly make is the two Hades games, because Inkbound has a surprising amount of story in addition to its turn based position based combat. The story is delivered with some genuinely really great voice acting and you can really see the love that everyone who worked on this game put in. So what about gameplay? Inkbound offers you a selection of classes, each of which supply you with three basic abilities and a passive skill. Over the course of the run you will upgrade these abilities in smaller and larger ways and find some generic skills that each class can acquire. Add to that an item system where you basically have a small inventory of things that have passive abilities but are also each part of a set or family, like physical attack or improving the currency (Kwillings). Quite a lot to consider! In combat you will move around your character to position them so you can line up your attacks and ideally evade those aimed at you. You have a limited amount of energy to use your abilities so more often than not each individual turn is its own little puzzle. You move from combat to non-combat encounters until you end up in a boss fight. Beat them to go to the next region. Each run consists of two regular regions and one very short boss region, so said runs don't overstay their welcome. With all that said, I would recommend Inkbound to everybody who likes tactical combat with a focus on positioning, but also those who enjoy roguelites who do something else than deckbuilding, isometric action or the bullet heaven style.
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Fantastic roguelike strategy game, every bit as good as Monster Train. Unfortunately feels somewhat unfinished in places (for example, the two conspicuous empty slots on the class selection screen); evidently the developers had more in mind for continued updates to this game that were put by the wayside in favor of Monster Train 2. I guess the game wasn't as successful as they had hoped? Either way this game is well worth playing.
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I hesitated to get Inkbound for a long time but after a steep sale a month or so ago I decided to jump in. And booooy, do I regret not supporting this game sooner! PROS: - Good variety of items/upgrades that support a strong "build-theory" style of gameplay - Solid gameplay loop with loads of stuff to unlock. After about 60 hours I still have quite of quests to complete - Good animations and sound design - Varied characters with completely different playstyles - Very little "fluff" items and upgrades; every item feels impactful to your loadout/run - Runs great on Steam Deck MID: - From everything I have seen, the game is essentially abandoned due to poor sales. With that said, the game DOES feel feature-complete as it is right now. I wish there was more coming but that's only because what is there is so good CONS: - It kind of sucks seeing blank spaces where they obviously intended to continue development but will never be filled. For example, there are two empty slots for character selection, some open trinket slots, etc. Not the end of the world because like I said above, the game feels feature-complete as it stands right now, but there was obviously more they wanted to do that will never be fulfilled Had I known how much I would enjoy Inkbound I would have got it at full price years ago.
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Inkbound is an addictive games with some really strong gameplay hooks. Sadly, the game also has a plethora of issues that really prevent Inkbound from shining. The Good Inkbound's combat feels unique yet familiar, and although some of the mechanics take some experience to truly understand their potential, the combat is engaging and deep. As you play through a game you will make choices based on some RNG items and abilities in terms of how you want to build your class (binder). There are some really fun combinations that can be very powerful into the run. The progression of a run feels good at lower and mid levels, and incredibly challenging at later levels. All the different classes feel really different and it's awesome to build them in different ways. For instance, one classes uses thread to tie enemies together-- gaining buffs for threading each of them and being able to deal lots of AOE damage. Another class specializes in defense gameplay which works well with items that allow you to return damage that is dealt to you. There is a ton of complexity and depth with the enemy types and you have an option to choose harder paths with better rewards. There are a lot of decisions to be made, yet none of them feel too overwhelming. I really enjoyed the music and the art is not bad. I admit that some of the 3d models don't look the best, but all in all the character and set designs are fine. I really like the artwork on the cards. There really didn't need to be a story for the game, but I actually found it to be pretty interesting. I found the development of the characters and their relationships to be engaging. So all in all I will say that I enjoyed the story, but how it was implemented is incredibly bad, which I will get into in the next session. The Bad There are some system level design choices made in Inkbound that really detract from the fun gameplay. The quest system feels so burdonsome and overwhelming. There are a lot of quests, way too many in my opinion. The way they are executed in Inkbound really disrupt the way you want to play the game. For me, a Roguelike is about getting into a new run and seeing what happens and trying out new item/abillity combinations. I want to load up this type of game and jump right in. But a lot of the games progression is actually locked behind quests. This is okay for some quests, such as win a run with X character, but really struggles with some quests that require you to use certain items or go down certain paths. The issue with this is that depending on RNG, those items may not drop, and those paths might not be what your build needs. So doing the quests makes the game really challenging because it forces weird decisions that just weren't necessary. I found that I couldn't do quests on the highest difficulty level, and had to go down to difficulty 10 to complete them with relative consitency. I didn't want to play at rank 10, I wouldn't to play at the highest rank but I wasn't able to do that because the quest system was preventing me from playing how I wanted to play-- that feels bad. Some of the quests also have you do the same book (levels) many times. It gets VERY repetitive. In order to progress the story, you need to do a LOT of quests. It's wild that after completing one of the final story quests, I saw that the steam achievement for doing that was something around 3.5%. Less than 4% of people actually completed the story-- That is not good. The story needs to help hook the player into the world, and the endgame should be solely about winning higher difficulty runs. There is no reason that the story took me 120 hours to complete in a rouge-like. Admittedly, I wasn't just grinding quests, but again that's because many of them were annoying to do. I also feel that the difficulty is way too steep a curve. I've played Inkbound for over 100 hours, and I feel like my ability to win at the highest difficulty is based on whether I get rare drops or certain abilities very early on. Some runs feel absolutely impossible. I've played ShinyShoe's Monster Train for over 1,000 hours and I feel like their difficulty feels a lot better in that game. Every run in Monster Train can be won at the highest level, but you really need to have good knowledge of the game. Maybe I'm just not good enough at Inkbound, but it feels more like imbalance and less like a skill level. So all in all, I really loved playing the game despite some really huge problems with the game. I doubt it will get future support, so try out the game of you love complex, strategic gameplay, and infinite playability. If you are looking for an incredibly polished, well refined roguelike, you might consider passing.
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Amazing game, truly. Unfortunately it was abandoned by the devs to focus on Monster Train 2 and wont be receiving any (much needed) future updates. It has the bones to be an amazing game, but is missing a bit of variety and content that is needed to make a roguelike like this one remain fun long-term. The first dozen or two hours are great, but once you've been through the classes and bosses it gets repetitive.Still, it's unique enough that it's worth it picking up on a steep sale if you can.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Inkbound is currently priced at 7.49€ on Steam.
Inkbound is currently available at a 70% discount. You can purchase it for 7.49€ on Steam.
Inkbound received 3,225 positive votes out of a total of 3,693 achieving a rating of 8.42.
😎
Inkbound was developed and published by Shiny Shoe.
Inkbound is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Inkbound is not playable on MacOS.
Inkbound is not playable on Linux.
Inkbound offers both single-player and multi-player modes.
Inkbound includes Co-op mode where you can team up with friends.
There are 4 DLCs available for Inkbound. Explore additional content available for Inkbound on Steam.
Inkbound does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Inkbound does not support Steam Remote Play.
Inkbound is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Inkbound.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 15 March 2026 04:05 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 14 March 2026 09:06 |
| Steam price | 15 March 2026 04:49 |
| Steam reviews | 14 March 2026 23:49 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Inkbound, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Inkbound
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Inkbound concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Inkbound compatibility
Game modes
Multiplayer
Features
Online players
74
Developer
Shiny Shoe
Publisher
Shiny Shoe
Release
09 Apr 2024
Platforms
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