Game EXP: INK (NS)

I purchased INK shortly after I finished playing High Noon Revolver (as Vincent Rubinetti wrote the music to both games) and now, more than six months later, I am finally getting around to finishing and publishing this article, which is not a criticism or critique of the game, just my ability to manage things.

Normally, INK is not the style of game that I would jump into.  Developer Zach J. Bell has said that he was inspired by Super Meat Boy and that is evident in so many aspects of the game.  You play as a two dimensional square in an area trying to get to the exit without dying.  When you die, because die you will, you automatically respawn at the beginning without a loss of momentum.  However, it is the primary mechanic in INK that separates it from other punishing pixel-perfect platformers by the fact that when you start each stage, you are unable to see any floors, ceilings, pits, hazards, or platforms.  You are dealt a blank canvas that you have to discover.

To make the playable area visible, you move over the surface, sliding your inky body across surfaces to coat them with iridescent and permanent ink while jumping sends droplets of ink our in all directions; now there would have been an interesting mechanic, having enemies erase the ink you smeared/splattered.  The game does a great job of introducing the concepts never putting the player in a situation that is so completely foreign that there is nothing left to do but frustratingly quit.    

Sure, new concepts and hazards are periodically introduced, because if there was no type of innovation then 75 levels of the same thing are going to get stale pretty quick, but this is done well enough, especially in the later stages that by the end of the introductory stage, you are ready for the subsequent levels to get more and more complex.

I did discover after playing a handful of levels that you have the option of having an in-game timer showing as you start the stage.  Because this is one of the things that makes me anxious about playing these types of games, I was glad that the default option was to have it off.  This allowed me to play the level at my own pace, and not be worried about hopping on a wall 10 times to get the timing of the jump down, rather than focus on the fact that I was hanging out on a wall for the last 20 seconds.  I genuinely believe that had the timer been there the whole time, I might not have been able to complete the game.  But that is just me.

I did have a couple of instances where the game consistently either glitched or bugged out.  I could recreate this bug too in both stages and I am told that it seems to be an issue with the Switch port.  What happens, in both of these stages (52 & 74) is that at a certain point, once semi-specific conditions are reached (being a platform has moved up onto the screen and you have killed the enemy on the said platform), your cube character starts sinking into the platforms and it becomes impossible to move without jumping, as evidenced by my Tweet on August 21st playing the penultimate stage, 74.  This bug became so frustrating, especially on Stage 74 that I nearly quit.  I found that I could play one or two attempts before the game began to bug out, forcing me to exit out of the level and restart, which would not be a problem except that in INK, when you restart a stage, all the ink that you had splattered to reveal the area will be erased.  Eventually, I did beat the level, thanks in part to having to attempt the stage so many times that I already had most of where the platforms were and what I needed to do memorized.

That is really it, which I realize makes it feel like there is less to this game than there actually is.  The game is a lot of fun with tight and consistent controls (with exception of the aforementioned, clipping into the stage), and the music at times blends into the background but also sounds great on its own (which I always consider being the hallmark of well-written music; I think Reveal (World 2) is my favorite track) and despite the fact that I am not typically drawn to pixel-perfect-platformers, I did love INK.  It could have easily fallen into the pile of Super Meat Boy clones, but using this simple mechanic combined with a steady difficulty curve that only felt overwhelming a handful of times made it stand out as a fun and great take on a genre I am not always a fan of.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

But I Must Go On