Inkulinati, the medieval side-stakes strategy game, has the unique honor of being the only game that makes me exclaim, “Oh no, he’s not within reach of my ass.” The swordsmen come to force the Minotaur-style beasts in the opposing army to take a nap (and skip their turns). This is, I assure you, very serious tactics, arguably at the heart of Inkulinati: thoughtful tactics, uncompromisingly ridiculous.
So bunnies have a useful skip-round debuff to taunt their opponents. Foxes steal resources from their targets. The devil naturally sets fire. That’s before you get to less coherent creatures. This is the weird and wonderful world of “things people drew on the margins of manuscripts hundreds of years ago,” weaponized.
I spent most of my time playing Inkulinati’s Journey mode, which is a single-player campaign divided into acts, with each gap in the road being a different type of battle or event. It’s easiest to explain how combat works with the most straightforward type of combat in Inkulinati: beast combat. It’s your (up to) five armies pitted against an enemy army, and the first to wipe out the other army wins – unless the apocalypse puts both of you in a bind.
With its smaller health pool, smaller damage pool, and turn-limited doomsday threat, playing in Inkulinati requires conscious turns and positioning to get the desired chaos. Each side takes turns playing a unit – who can move within range of them and then take an action before going to bed. If all units on one side are sleeping, then the other side continues to play. Without a fixed order of turns, there is no way of knowing who is going to take action next, and you have to carefully prioritize: who is most at risk in their current position? Can I put them to sleep? can i kill them Can I push them away? Or better: Can I push them off the map, or push them into approaching fire?
There is a very real and entirely intentional strategy of “pushing” characters to simply slide until they encounter the first empty space in that direction. If there is no room, they will immediately slide out of the battlefield, screaming as they go. Lines of units and obstacles for tactical shoves are a real joy (unless, of course, it happens at my cost, in which case it’s cheating, and it sucks.)
The other two types of combat expose what’s special about Inkulinati: You’re not playing as a bunch of quirky little creatures; you’re playing as the person who drew them. So in a Tiny vs Beast battle, in addition to your beast army, you also have a Tiny Inkulinati, like a small marginaliasona, equipped with their own special moves. You draw new units, pen in hand, or sweep enemies off the map, or crush them to death with your fists – but these actions are limited to your tiny surrounding area, and if they’re killed, The battle is over.
Throughout the game there is a sense of real people having fun, that the characters playing the game are not what you think you are in front of a computer. It’s a celebration of the human desire to doodle in the margins and imagine the weird and delightful, but there’s also a “yes and” spirit to the dialogue that makes it feel like all your opponents, shopkeepers, and event characters are just Another person is a game master. They’re playing Dante, they’re playing a small army, they’re playing shopkeepers who can be bribed with biscuits. The jokes will fade over time, but there’s something soulful about Inkulinati’s tone that goes beyond bunny ass in suggestions about why people play competitive games together.
Every act ends with a duel: your little duels, who have their own special abilities and are willing to knock you off the map. There’s also a dedicated duel mode in the start menu, where you can customize the battlefield and hazards to fight against pre-formed armies, but there’s no one to fight, and I prefer my AI-fighting campaigns.
As you progress through the campaign, you start with an army of three and expand your options with combat rewards and shops, as well as passive abilities and new hand moves for healing and damage. Each creature has its own unique tactical advantage – you can find general-purpose, like ranged fighters or spearmen across the board, but your ax-throwing demons that cause blood and breathe fire play a very important role on your team. Different roles – Throw a bowl of beans on your lap. New types of creatures are limited by experience, and I’ve always found that I’ve never unlocked anything that I haven’t faced an enemy first. It’s narratively neat–like facing them in combat makes you want to draw them–but it can be frustrating at times, since some creatures are their own best tactical counters.
During Early Access, balancing is a work in progress. I find myself opting to wear nice donkey bards every time, forced to nap due to their huge area of effect, and dreading the sight of enemies knowing my army is likely to be knocked out every other round. The damage effects over time have also been tweaked pretty aggressively, and while some are playable – an infected unit is at least free from biowarfare until it goes down – others are just faster than they can be useful or replaced Destroy the unit. That said, none of these are game-breaking, as cheating death is a resource for Inkulinati.
While uncomplicated, its resource swapping is one of the things that keeps me in Journey mode instead of jumping straight to the duel option from the start menu. Drawing the same creature over and over adds boredom, an additional cost penalty for drawing. A poorly chosen army or a bad route can leave you ill-equipped in a duel, but just like you can trade gold, health, or reputation for other benefits in events, you can at the point of death. The boredom is gone, and you can request a rematch – or move on with no reward for fighting. Going back to a fight you’re likely to lose is more of a tactical exchange: do I want to risk breaking more quills on the rewards of this fight, or save them for later fights that probably won’t happen ? Is it worth paying this price just to cut the cost of my army?
Inkulinati is a confident strategy game, even if it’s sometimes out of balance. Its celebration of goofy joy, focused aesthetic, and sense of humor go hand in hand with thoughtful and strategic combat, without compromising either. It’s an achievement to make something so playful without glossing over the tactical work behind it. Inkulinati hope to spend a year in Early Access where they will expand the already existing Beasts, Masters, and Battlegrounds, add online multiplayer, and tweak the balance, but if it never changes from a game I already play, I still Will be as happy as a clam – or maybe a man-eating snail.
