After a rocky launch thanks to sentiment around monetization and an always-online requirement, Monster Train developer Shiny Shoe has finally launched Inkbound in 1.0 on Steam. The turn-based co-op roguelike has come a long way, with Shiny Shoe reversing many of its decisions and continually building out the game.
Inkbound’s 1.0 Rise of the Unbound update is here, bringing with it a new final boss, extra quests, challenge buffs, new trinkets, and vestiges to spice up run variety in the roguelike game.
The new quests and final boss are tied together, as Shiny Shoe beefs up the end of Inkbound to give you a proper challenge and some extra story quests to flesh out the end of the game.
Both Villains and Guardians (Inkbound’s mid-game book bosses) now have challenge buffs too, and the game tells you what their buff is ahead of facing them. Shiny Shoe says this should “give you a gameplay reason to decide to go for one Villain or another,” so basically bosses can now have different buffs, offering up more challenge and choice.
25 new vestiges bring the total to 242, with these items acting as buffs that can give you different abilities. Shiny Shoe adds that there are five new vestige sets, meaning they now number 37 – so there are over eight trillion vestige combos now available for build variety. There are also two new trinkets bringing the total to 20, with these items offering up more permanent boosts you can equip between runs.
Then there are some brand-new animated cutscenes, more Steam achievements, and a major balance rework that aims to increase the overall challenge. Shiny Shoe says “In general as we increased the challenge it also pushed us to make things more fair, certain unfair feeling challenge buffs have been cut, and we’ve generally rebalanced the weight of a variety of player power sources against each other to feel more like even contributions.”
There are also smaller changes like aspect ratio support, the ability to change your name, new audio and visual effects, and even more.
Despite the love for Shiny Shoe’s roguelite deckbuilder Monster Train, Inkbound launched with some issues. For players, these were namely the always online mode and heavy use of microtransactions and a battle pass. Inkbound later removed all monetization and added an offline mode, citing how it was “clear that industry and player sentiment is trending against the presence of these features.”
Inkbound 1.0 is out on Steam right now, with 10% off until Tuesday, April 16, so expect to pay $26.99 / £22.49 right now.
If you’re looking for more now that Inkbound is finally in 1.0, we’ve also got some of the best multiplayer games and co-op games you can try with friends right now.
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