Inkulinati
Rating: 4/5
Developer: Yaza Games
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Platform: PC, Xbox
Price: Rs 999
Inkulinati is an ink-based strategy game that will have you tearing your hair and laughing at the same time. The game is a turn-based strategy where you have to use bizarre creatures drawn to look like medieval marginalia.
What is medieval Marginalia? Well, scribes between the 12th and 16th centuries used to add small illustrations, drawings and even doodles in the margin of texts. These would include animals dressed like humans wielding musical instruments and weapons. They would mostly be humorous, but some also included notes explaining the text in the main copy.
What does this have to do with a game? Developers at Yaza Games decided that these creatures needed to be in a strategy game, and the scribe, in this case, you, can control them to take down a rival scribe. It’s kept a lot of the humour from the source material, where you could attack your opponent by just pushing them off the corner of the book, or use your inked creature’s butt to launch a deadly attack.
Under it all, though, it is a serious strategy game that takes no prisoners. You have to learn how to take down your opponents quickly without losing out. The AI doesn’t hold any punches back, either. You also have only a couple of lives represented by quills. If you lose against opponents as few as three times, you have to start all the way from the beginning. This gets even more dire in the game as you progress, especially if you don’t go around collecting quills.
Overall, this is not a game for everyone, the humour of this game only masks the seriousness of the strategy involved in completing Inkulinati. Recommended for any strategy gamer, that is looking for a challenge. At Rs 999 on Steam, it is pretty easy on the pocket as well.
They would mostly be humorous, but some also included notes explaining the text in the main copy
