Farts are tricky. You should never trust them, for one. For another, they’re easy to overdo. Sometimes they’re funny and sometimes they’re desperate. Sometimes, they just leave a mess everywhere. But building a strategy game around farts…well, you could argue World War I had a lot of gas involved, but Inkulinati involves farting rabbits, dogs with swords, fires, and medieval marginalia. Farts are, of course, part and parcel to one’s strategic options when farting rabbits are involved.
Inkulinati
Developer: Yaza Games
Price: $25
Platform: PC (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X
MonsterVine was supplied with Steam code for review
Let me back up: When you were in school, did you ever draw tanks and airplanes having an epic war in the margins of your paper when you were supposed to be learning about algebra or the history of Egypt or something? If not…I genuinely can’t relate to you, so please pretend you did. Well, medieval monks also did this when they were supposed to be copiyng the Bible and whatnot. What Daedalic and Yaza Games, the absolute maniacs, did was turn “Drawing weird animals fighting each other because I just cannot write another paragraph of “so-and-so BEGAT so-and-so” into a roguelike strategy game along the lines of Darkest Dungeon. But less goth and depressing and more slightly silly.
The aforementioned Inkulinati do battle with living ink that allows their marginalia–the aforementioned weird animals and others including slugs with axes, a donkey bard that has some kind of farting tuba, weird human-headed dragons, and other excitements–to do battle and even affect them. Each is surprisingly well balanced (this game could’ve easily been a gimmick) and has a variety of drawbacks and benefits that play into the various strategies at play.
For example: Rabbits can moon their opponents, which outrages them so much they miss their turns. Foxes steal things. Devils set things on fire (the bastards). There are several fart-related debuffs. There are also map effects. The hand of “god”, that being you, the author, can also interfere for damage or to smudge things or otherwise cause problems.
Each map has a variety of horizontal lines with actual chokepoints(!) and obstacles(!!) that are destructible, and some even bring the vertical into the equation, meaning you can fire your fart artillery (fart-tillery?) in a variety of directions for suppressive effects. You can also push and shove things off the map, into fire, and otherwise indulge in some old school pushing and shoving for bullying laughs.
The setup of the game: That you are drawing creatures that are fighting someone else’s drawings in the margins flows through the general vibe of the game. It’s surprisingly engaging and quite tactical while also being pretty loosey goosey and fun without taking up months of your life like a Paradox game. It’s just a chill good…ahhhhhhhhhhhhh god, it’s chili night and I’ve had that one stored up for hours. Might wanna open a window for that one, you’re gonna need a couple turns to get rid of that, heh heh.
The Final Word
Surprisingly Deep And Very Silly
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
