The medieval one is a period full of charm and, to the detriment of those who consider it a “dark” period, of humor. One of the greatest examples of this old-fashioned humor, which has managed to survive over time and also become the basis for a series of current memes, is found in manuscripts, and goes by the name of marginalia.
Marginalia are drawings made by scribes on the edges of the pages of text that they often depicted animals engaged in typically human situations or fantasy creatures rather grotesque. The Yaza Games studio has created an entire video game that allows us to control these beasts, which is called Inkulinatiand which today we are reviewing in its Switch version.
This title has caused a lot of talk about itself since the opening of its Kickstarter thanks to a truly unmistakable artistic style but, pad in hand, Will Inkulinati be something more than a beautiful virtual manuscript? Let's find out together in this review.
Between swords, bows and ink
Inkulinati is presented to us by the same developers as an “ink-based” strategy, and actually we couldn't find a better definition. The title, which immediately immerses us in the atmosphere of times gone by a decidedly apt soundtrackoffers different game modes.
We have the mode “Academy“, a series of short tutorials that help us get into the game patterns, the “Duel” which allows us to challenge the AI or other players in single games, a Bestiary which shows us all the unlocked creatures (it will happen as we proceed, and there will be a total of 50) and the “Voyage“.
The latter, which we can consider the main mode, is a replayable story in 5 or more acts where, with each new start of the adventure, something will change. Once we have chosen the characteristics (aesthetic but also in terms of abilities) of our character, we will be able to start the first of a series of truly crazy adventures.
Purpose of a clash between Inkulinati (the little men who are responsible for “drawing” the various beasts on the battlefield) is to eliminate the other Inculinated precisely through the attacks of their own troops.
At the beginning of each game we will have to choose 5 different types of troops to deploy: we have swordsmen (for close attacks), archers and spearmen (for ranged attacks) and, continuing the adventure, more and more creatures with sui generis abilities. There can be up to 5 troops present on the battlefield.
Summoning a single creature costs a certain amount of inka sort of currency that we can obtain turn by turn based on where we decide to place our soldiers.
The strategic combat of Inkulinati is a lot fascinating rich in variables: we will have the constant need to measure our strength and think before acting. We can push enemies and allies, attack in multiple directions, use the troops' special abilities (which lead to real state changes in other game elements), or use objects to cause explosions or… curses!
A funny story… to die for!
As previously mentioned, each Inkulinati journey starts and develops differently but, in any case, our goal will be to to challenge in an Inkulinati duel death itself and, to reach his presence, we will have to accomplish a long journey full of bizarre situations.
The mode intersperses duels between beasts (in which the one who manages to kill all the opposing troops wins) a duels among Inkulinati, shopsareas where we can unlock a improvement of our basic statistics, and hilarious boss: among the Inkulinati they stand out literati, legendary characters and even some saints of the Church.
The first journey, which essentially constitutes the main adventure, has a rather short duration (5 acts, i.e. sub-worlds), while the other two, which require their completion to obtain the maximum rank among the Inkulinati, last 6 and 7 acts respectively . In any case, we focus on the 3-6 hours depending on the length of the tripa time that seemed extremely short to us, to be honest.
The story mode is not only made up of a decent variety of challenges, but also a series of skits bordering on comedy: jump dialogues are always a disappointment, but doing them in Inkulinati it will prevent you from fully understanding the game. There are 4 difficulty levels available, but we think that the normal difficulty is a little too easy, especially in the early stages. Overall, we were satisfied with the story mode, although we would have preferred it to be a little more consistent in terms of length.
The charm of the manuscript
The aspect that most made Inkulinati go from being a simple idea to a real game is certainly the artistic style: in the wake of the huge success of Pentiment (even if the gestation of Inkulinati starts from a long previous early access ), Inkulinati manages to make an impact with one very well defined and recognizable graphic stylewhich is accompanied by good animations and a nice soundtrack.
A note of merit must be made regarding the translations: the game is available in Italian and, with great attention to detail, Yaza Games has managed to reproduce the sought-after humor in a crystal-clear manner even in a language other than the one for which the jokes were originally intended.
On the contrary, we found less attention to what is possible exploitation of the peculiarities of Nintendo Switch (console on which we tested it) and, focusing on the Nintendo console, a certain slowness in loadingespecially when starting the home screen.
#Inkulinati #Review #small #medieval #folly
