Inkbound, Shiny Shoe’s co-op RPG Roguelike, is in the homestretch towards its 1.0 launch on April 10th, and with it comes a slew of new updates, a new boss, and much more. During its early access phase, which has been going on for about 11 months, the developer has added new content and made monumental changes to its business model in line with player feedback—most famously, pulling all its microtransactions from the game.
Touting the vision that Shiny Shoe is a “player-first, feedback-oriented company,” CEO Mark Cooke (who was wearing the very shiny shoes the company is named for) said that the decision to do this was based purely on that feedback and a desire to stop obfuscating the good work the team was doing to build the core experience.
Cooke described a situation where nearly every discussion about Inkbound revolved around its microtransactions and seasonal pass - both monetization models almost every live service nowadays rests its entire financial future upon, from large triple-A developers to indie studios like Shiny Shoe.
Interestingly enough, rather than the decision to pull the microtransactions from Inkbound was met more with relief than nervousness, basically because now the attention can be focused squarely on the game itself.
“We as a team were just honestly really unhappy that so much of the discussion about our game was about the monetization,” Cooke explained in our chat during GDC 2024. “After the early access launch, we were kind of blindsided by the negativity surrounding that. We thought, you know, it was very player friendly. We tried to design it to be totally optional.”
“We didn’t even drive you into the UI,” Game Director Andrew Krausnick added. “But we understand the feedback, obviously.”
Cooke talked about an early update to the early access build that brought a new class, tweaks to the monetization, and more. Yet the conversation among content creators and the press still seemed hyper-focused on monetization, with Krausnick adding that this was especially true for streamers who started to pick up the roguelike and may not have been familiar with Shiny Shoe or games like Inkbound.
“Influencers are also a really big part of this,” Andrew explained. “We see people who aren’t familiar with us, who aren’t familiar with games like [Inkbound], who aren’t really there to tige it some time.[They’d] pick it up the game and play it on the stream, clock on the button and see something that looks like a battle pass, shut the stream down and move on to the next game. And it’s like, ‘Alright, that’s where we’re losing people, right?’”
Krausnick continued by describing the landscape where larger studios might be able to push marketing dollars into the situation and put the game in front of more users through sheer force of will to overcome these obstacles, whereas a smaller studio like Shiny Shoe really relies on those organic lifts to see them through.
“In order to get that sort of organic attention and really drive conversation around this game, we needed to not have this speed bump, basically.”
Shiny Shoe made the decision to pull its microtransactions from in-game, making the different tracks of the battle pass basically unlockable through content, while the cosmetics and unlockables were siloed off as DLC - something that Cooke described as more palatable to their fanbase. This means that the additional, optional content is still there, but there is no longer that psychological need to complete a battle pass to unlock these extras - you can buy the DLC if you want; if not, no harm.
As a result, the conversation around Inkbound shifted from this hyper fixation on its monetization to the actual roguelike Shiny Shoe was crafting. Taking the financial backbone out of a game, especially as a smaller studio like Shiny Shoe, isn’t easy, but it seems to have paid off. We’ve seen other studios follow suit, most recently with Blizzard pulling its heroes off its paid seasonal pass because it just wasn’t resonating with its player base.
This shift helped to change the narrative around Inkbound for the better, with the roguelike becoming quasi-famous for responding to player feedback in such a way that, especially in today’s over-monetized live service market, felt refreshing to see. I remember when I first saw that news and was somewhat taken aback that Shiny Shoe would even have the courage to do something like this - because that’s what it takes to completely strip away the model you feel might help support the game throughout the years. It also takes confidence in the product you’re making to know that it can resonate with players even without these systems, something I feel the Inkbound team has in droves.
Expanding the narrative
In addition to changing the outward narrative around Inkbound, Shiny Shoe is expanding the in-game narrative with its 1.0, dubbed Rise of the Unbound, release. Inkbound has gone through and updated its story, pulling narrative from its previous seasons in early access as well as new narrative beats to tie it all together into one, cohesive story, as Andrew described it in our meeting.
This new narrative will feature full English voice acting and new cutscenes to help tell the tale in a much more compelling and accessible way, while Inkbound will also be getting language support for multiple new languages: Chinese, French, German, and Japanese.
While voice-over support won’t be extended to those additional languages (it’s just too cost-prohibitive, for one thing), the inclusion of meeting players where they are and making it accessible to more people feels right in line with the development's player-focused nature.
Given Inkbound’s narrative had already been one of its strengths, in my opinion, I’m really interested to see how this is all woven together into the storybook tale Shiny Shoe is telling - especially with the new big bad at the end of the game to contend with. The developers wouldn’t share too much about this big boss they’ve teased over time, but they seemed pretty excited to start drip-feeding this new endgame.
The team is also looking at ways to keep its different runs from becoming stale thanks to players discovering metas and optimal skills to choose during one. The team pulls in a lot of data from players, playtesters and more to figure out what Inkbound fans are using in each run and try to tweak things to help keep the meta fresh and, in a way, still random.
“One of our advantages is basically the randomness [of each run] makes you have to kind of account for that, at least,” Andrew explains when talking about balancing and keeping the meta fresh for everyone. During a run powers called Vestiges drop throughout, effectively giving you skills and augments throughout each to build around - and while there are classes and archetypes to think about when planning, one you’re on a run the Vestiges you get aren’t defined.
This is one of the best aspects of Inkbound’s gameplay, in my opinion, as it forces you to think on your feet during the gameplay instead of simply going through the motions of a predefined skill rotation or meta-designed ahead of time. As MMO players, we tend to try to optimize everything - and that’s still possible to an extent in Inkbound, but that randomness will always keep each run fresh and unique.
Building For The Future
Inkbound has its sights set on 1.0, and it’s pretty refreshing to see an early access game actually leave early access rather quickly. That always seemed to be the plan, according to Cooke, who said they were looking at a “year or year and a half” internally as their target.
In addition to the new narrative, Vestiges, and other content coming, one other major addition is controller support. This opens up even more players who may not like the WASD and mouse-aiming control scheme going on right now, as the controller effectively turns Inkbound into a twin-stick shooter.
This also allows for native Steam Deck support, which I am particularly excited about. Cooke wouldn't say whether Inkbound is coming to consoles, though, other than they have “nothing to announce” at this time.
Roguelikes can excel on Steam’s handheld, though. In fact, if I’m being honest, they’re probably the most-played genre on my Steam Deck. I spend nights laying in bed getting one more run in with Hades or trying to progress in Dead Cells—neither game is something I’m spending my RTX 4090-powered PC on. I can easily see Inkbound slotting into that rotation.
With Steam Deck will also come the addition of a single-player offline mode. While Inkbound is primarily meant to be played with people, Steam Decks are mobile, and there will be times when players don’t have internet. So an offline mode allows players to keep chugging along wherever they are in the world.
Either way, as someone who hasn't played much since early access launched, I'm eager to jump back in and see what I've missed when 1.0 launches. From new classes, new Vestige powers, story, and more, Inkbound looks like it's primed for the future.
Inkbound will be fully released on Steam on April 10th.
