Realm Of Ink Demo Review: Hades, But With Chinese Mythology

Hades set a new benchmark for roguelikes when it was released back in 2020. The unique isometric view with its impressive fast-paced gameplay earned it multiple awards that year. It would be obvious then that many games took inspiration from it.

Realm of Ink joins that list and borrows a few leaves from Hades while adding its own gameplay elements. It features a unique setting of the character being inside a short story collection that is being told by your actions. This gives it a perfect setup for a roguelike gameplay with a new story being written every time you attempt it.

Is There Enough Ink To Write Its Own Story?

One good look at Realm of Ink and you will instantly spot the resemblance to Hades. It almost looks like a Chinese mythology-themed DLC for Hades. But it does a few things differently that make it stand on its own during the gameplay.

The game starts with you playing Red, a female warrior who finds herself inside a collection of stories as one of its characters. The world is said to be ruled by a mysterious Book Spirit, and Red is unaware of how she got herself in this position. The environment surrounding her feels fresh and unlike the levels you would see in Hades.

The power of Ink Gems is one of the unique features in Realm of Ink. You can hold two distinct Ink powers at a time via Ink Gems which do various types of damage in different methods. Some are AoE that can stay in an area for a while or fire in a cone of area; others are amplifying effects like adding damage to your dashes.

These Ink powers have elemental properties like Wood, Fire, Water, etc. These can be powerful against certain enemies or cater to certain builds and items that buff that type of damage. However, one of the most interesting things involving this is the Ink pet.

I had an Ink Pet running around with me as a companion, helping me in the fights. And the pet changes based on the combination of Ink Gems I have! Fire and Wood element Ink Gems gave me a pet with those powers, but switching out one of these Gems with a different element Gem gave me an entirely different pet. There are multiple types of pets that you can have based on which combination of Ink Gems you find and equip.

After completing the demo and defeating the Yuwen Yuan boss, the game introduces two new weapons that were not too different from each other but still fun to try out in a second run of the game. While the animations and overall quality feel very polished, the game felt slightly repetitive with the same few enemies and Ink Gems to play with.

Other than that, however, most things are similar to other roguelike titles. Every so often I was sent to a shop level to upgrade my character, buy perks, buy food for health, and things like that. The perks are basic, but this also makes it easy to understand and pick one quickly. Perks included things like adding a 5% increase to all damage, increasing your burning damage, etc.

Verdict

The game felt way easier than Hades or any other roguelike games that I have played. The only real challenge I felt was during the final boss fight in the preview. So, this game can be a good fit for a more casual player who wants to get into a game like this but doesn’t want it to be as challenging as some of the other popular roguelikes.

The Realm of Ink demo shows decent potential to be a good game. It can definitely give Hades fans something similar to play with until Hades 2 comes out, but it would need to do way more for its final release if it really wants to stand out. Right now, it can only be described as a Hades clone wrapped in Chinese mythology with a few unique gameplay elements.

Rating: 6/10

GamesHorizon received a preview copy of the game for Steam.