Description

Dead Ink is a hardcore souls-like based on a unique 3D-printing core mechanic. It is set in top-down view of a vertiginous hand-crafted tower with uncompromising and punishing combat. No procedural generation, every room, item and enemy placement is made deliberately. Start your run by choosing a loadout and sending it as a print job to a destination printer. Each printer has a limited amount of ink which can be restocked by harvesting it from fallen enemies. Think of it like a souls game, but where bonfires are 3D printers and souls are ink. However, running out of ink will result in a game over and starting from scratch.

History

I am a solo developer, and I had the following goals with Dead Ink:

Introduce new mechanics to the souls-like genre.

Here the combination of collecting ink and using it in printers provides its own unique mechanics. Natural gameplay emerges from these mechanics, and the game highlights and focusses on these elements. For example as a player, you will find yourself attempting to re-stock printers by carrying ink from other parts of the tower.

Explore the use of a strict top-down camera within a vertical 3d layout.

Distinct from top-down perspective in a 2d world, or over-the-shoulder in 3d, in Dead Ink the player progresses predominantly downwards, and so the camera points in this direction of travel. This birds-eye view also emphasises certain strategic elements of melee combat, highlighting the importance of the player's position within a space. The combat is geared for this; some enemies are designed to push you off the edges, the plunge attack is strong, and enemies will path to follow you from floor to floor.

Architecture and light

The game was also driven by my own personal interest in learning about architecture and the importance of light. To this end I developed a custom engine with its own global illumination calculation. As a direct result of this, the tower is lit naturally by sunlight, and so the spaces in the tower have to have enough windows cut into them to allow it to fill with reflected light.

A dense structure to explore

I also wanted a dense labyrinthine structure for the player to explore, with surprises and shortcuts. The chosen setting for this in Dead Ink is a brutalist tower. The architecture of the tower had to accomplish three things: support good gameplay locally, have sufficiently dense pathing to explore throughout the entire tower, and look good from afar. The result of meeting these three constraints is the tower that you see in Dead Ink.

Features

• A hardcore, punishing souls-like with a unique 3D-printing core mechanic
• Unravel a twisted, nonlinear, hand-crafted vertical environment
• Harvest ink from enemies and use it to print yourself, weapons and items
• Choose how to spend your ink — on better gear, making more attempts, or on blueprint upgrades
• Running out of ink is game over