Monster Train is one of my favorite roguelike deck builders, with some really clever design backed up by a strong art style and soundtrack. An ‘overwhelmingly positive’ 96% Steam rating shows that feeling is held among its community as well, so it’s safe to say that I’m not alone in keeping a close eye on developer Shiny Shoe’s new co-op roguelike and tactical RPG, Inkbound. To round out the year, the team launches its roadmap for the run-up to the game’s full Steam release, along with its latest early access update.
Inkbound takes some of the best ideas from Monster Train and builds them out into a beautiful turn-based RPG mixing in roguelike elements, real-time exploration, turn-based combat, and the option to join up with your friends and adventure in up to four-player co-op. Recently making waves for its decision to remove all in-game Inkbound monetization to better appeal to its audience, Shiny Shoe now delivers a fresh mid-season update.
The Inkbound 0.3.5 update introduces career records and adds a screen to show some of your new personal and group bests when you finish a run. Matchmaking has been improved, with Shiny Shoe saying it’s attempting to group you more closely with players of a similar rank to you, although this range will expand the longer you’re searching for a game. It also introduces the ability to manually delete your progression without losing your account progression, season level, cosmetics, and Vault Dust currency.
There’s a range of balance changes, and some bug fixes as well, all of which can be found in the full patch notes courtesy of Shiny Shoe. The team has also shown off its new beta build in action during a livestream, which you can watch in the video above. “As we head towards 1.0 we’re working hard on game balance, with many bigger changes coming in that update,” the team says.
“In the meantime, we wanted to increase the challenge just a little in a few areas where enemies were underpowered. To that end, we increased the health slightly on very low HP enemies and have also increased the health of enemies across the board in multiplayer, especially at high player count.”
Shiny Shoe also shares its updated roadmap for the 1.0 launch of Inkbound. This shows all the features the game’s still working on rounding out before it’s happy to remove the early access label from the game. While the team doesn’t yet reveal quite when we’ll see Inkbound leave early access, it does say to “be on the lookout for an official announcement soon.”
While we wait for further details, have a look through more of the best roguelike games on PC for plenty of run-based mayhem, along with the best co-op games you and your friends can enjoy together.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.