Ahead of the Game - Inkvasion tells you to have a good night, sleep tight, and not let the ink monsters bite
Survival after dark
- Build your town and expand your territory
- Defend against inky monsters when night falls
- Whatever you do, you'd better not run out of ink
Hello and welcome to Ahead of the Game, a series where we tell you all about an upcoming game that, despite not being out yet, is available for you to play at the time of publishing. Through this series, you can grab a chance to play games well ahead of their release date, be that through Soft Launch, Open Beta, Demos, or more.
Wouldn't we all just love to wield a magic talisman against things that go bump in the night? While there's no effortless way to fend off the hordes of darkness threatening to overwhelm your town when the sun goes down here, Inkvasion does give you proper tools to survive - and it's all about the ink.
Now, the concept is nothing too mindblowing here - you build your town, gather your resources, and train your troops to guard your lands throughout the day. When night falls, all manner of horrors will come creeping towards your base, and you'll have to outlast the onslaught until the sun rises and you live to fight another day.
It's all very typical, but what makes this new survival-slash-tower defence worth noting, in my opinion, is its overall visual style. As you can probably tell from the title, the aesthetics are very much ink-based here, and you'll need to farm all the ink you can get your grubby hands on, as these valuable resources will help you fortify your defences when the sun goes down.
The troops you deploy are all pretty cute too, but don't let the adorable visuals lower your guard - you'll really have to strategise the best placements for your structures and troops if you ever hope to survive. Units have specific traits and skills as well, with upgrades you can level up in real-time as you gather more ink during attack waves.
One thing that feels incredibly clunky to me is how the controls are laid out. What do I mean? The plot or grid you're building on, for instance, always stays in the middle of the screen, and you'll have to move the whole map around to figure out where to position your buildings.
I don't particularly enjoy this new type of layout, to be honest. I mean, it simply adds to the frustration during high-pressure moments when chaos unfolds. One wrong placement, after all, can make everything fall apart - which is especially true when you need more farms and inconveniently find yourself lacking plots of land to build them on.
So, how do you play Inkvasion?
That said, it's still worth giving it a go, I'd say, since the controls are a simple matter of trying to get used to them over time. It's currently in beta in select regions on Android if you're curious, though!You can also pre-register for some launch goodies as well - and if the App Store listing is the least bit accurate, it should hopefully land on your device by December 31st!
