At first glance Realm of Ink looks like a flagrant Hades clone. Look closer, squint, and yes, it still looks like a flagrant Hades clone. But after a half-dozen hours spent with this China-developed roguelite, some of its more bonkers qualities shone through, such as the flexibility of its pet system, and the fact that depending on the build you stumble into, it can turn into something more akin to Vampire Survivors.
Realm of Ink is set inside fictional books, hence the name. Most of the people and creatures you encounter don’t know they’re fictional entities, which could be why the voice acting is so bizarrely over-the-top, making your average Tales dub seem artful and restrained.
I have to confess I quickly zoned out on the story, though the meticulously illustrated worlds kept my interest. These are far less elaborately animated compared to Hades, but they feel more distinctive. They’re dreamy in their picture book woodenness, and the varying themes and color palettes all draw from different aspects of Chinese culture, mythology and iconography.
Sword-wielding Red is the initial protagonist, but eight more are unlockable. My favourite was Violetta, an agility-centric dagger dual-wielder whose heavy attack issues a magical spinning blade. I also liked Miss Lee, a ranged, luck-based character who shoots sparkling golden coins and whose heavy attack is a lethal rotating dice. Whoever you roll out with, perks and abilities accrued throughout a run are specific to that character, meaning all grow in their own madcap directions.
The most conspicuous innovation here, at least compared to Hades, is the pet system. Your ink pet will morph on the spot according to the two ink gems you have equipped. Ink gems confer both active abilities and passive buffs, but mixing water and metal gems for instance, will create a Frosty Momo, who can summon an ice damage AOE. When I later swap out the water ink gem with a feather ink gem, I get an Acute Momo instead, who dashes at enemies and scratches ’em up. Eventually my pet can get a special skill distinct to its breed, and these special skills can entirely transform its efficacy. They basically grow from plucky little DPS machines into room fraggers.
I reckon it took me way more than a dozen attempts to beat Hades. But I managed to beat Realm of Ink on my fifth run, mainly because my Violetta became extraordinarily overpowered thanks to the RNG lottery and no canny buildcrafting of my own. I found an ink gem that was not only strengthened by blade projectiles, but spawned a “dragon avatar” who basically played spinning blade tennis with me, eviscerating everything between us.
Then I found a perk that ensured the blade would continue to stack damage rather than hurt enemies on impact just once, while also increasing its radius by 25 percent. There were a bunch of prosaic stat-oriented perks that bolstered this run too, but overall, I marched right through to the end on this build, creaming boss enemies I had never encountered before, and demolishing the final boss’s two phases before it even occurred to me that I was fighting the final boss. All I had to do was mash the attack buttons and move, though I didn’t really know where I was moving because the screen was full of numbers.
While Realm of Ink undeniably requires dexterity with some classes—good luck pulling off the same feat with the lumbering pole-bearing A’kuan—others feel much more like a Vampire Survivors-style lottery, where a fortunate accrual of random perks and abilities will basically guarantee a win. And I kinda like this about Realm of Ink. It’s genuinely very funny to become an unbeatable monster through dumb luck. It’s fun to see how silly things can get, especially when the silliness starts to take shape after the first biome. I don’t like it when games are balanced so perfectly that their lifeblood is siphoned. Games should be breakable.
I do think many players will find the bosses too easy, though, at least on the default difficulty mode. I never had to learn their patterns, and while I’ve played countless other action roguelites over the years, I still generally need to face bosses a couple of times before I’ll beat them. That wasn’t the case here. Realm of Ink is still in early access, so maybe that will be addressed in time.
Or maybe it’s best if it isn’t: Realm of Ink is as much about the fireworks of a broken build as it is about getting good. The final version is expected to launch later this year, but I reckon there’s enough in there right now. It’s on Steam, and there’s a free demo.
