Ink Travellers was one of the entries for the IGMC (Indie Game Making Contest) for 2015. As one of the judges of the competition it is my pleasure to share my thoughts on the game. This review will basically just be the notes I took cleaned up. It will be based on the competition version of the game, so certain aspects of the game may have been changed, and thus I won't be giving an official star score (though I will be including an unofficial score).


Presentation
Presentation wise, the game is well done. The graphics all fit well together and great care has gone in to crafting the worlds you find yourself travelling through. There are a few issues here and there - some minor mapping errors and weirdly evented pieces (like NPCs not reacting to scenes that have passed).

There are also a fair few scattered bits of written errors - one or two spelling mistakes, oddly worded/grammatically questionable/incorrect bits. This detracts a little from the story, which is a pity as overall the writing is a big part of the game.

Music is very nice, though I'd question the music that plays in battle as not quite being right for battles, and there's a lack of sound effects, which is sad to see as they can add quite a lot to the atmosphere of a game and this game aims for certain areas to be atmospheric.


Gameplay
Gameplay wise, the game has some issues but overall quite good. There were questionable passabilities on things like flowers, which you'd think you would be able to walk over.

The gameplay reflects the plot, with skills being learned by story (though easy to pass over by accident - of the three skills one character learns, two are skippable, and the other character has two that can be skipped as well... of three.) That aside, all played well, bar having to search areas in order to find the last bomb.

There was on-map interactions though it took a little while for me to understand what the game wanted me to do when it came to using items. A bit more clarity would have been appreciated - always tell your players how to do things!

Battles were fairly balanced, in that skills were useful and losing was as hard to do as winning. There were challenging parts, but for the most part I didn't worry about dying in battles unless I sequence-broke, which you could do (though you got annihilated if you tried).

Engagement
The game was engaging - I played it to completion even after the timer ran out for the hour, and enjoyed what I played. I wouldn't exactly call it a fun game, but it was enjoyable enough to see it through to the end.


Overall, with a bit more polish in the language and characterisation, and some extra attention to detail when it comes to some of the events and skill progression, it could be a very, very neat little game.

As it stands, it is still quite a pretty little game and I enjoyed it to completion.


In the IGMC I scored Ink Travellers 55, but on RMN I'm giving it a solid 4.