Monster Train devs’ turn-based co-op roguelike Inkbound exits early access into 1.0 this April

Almost a year after it launched into early access, Inkbound will release its full 1.0 offering this April. The cooperative mixture of tight turn-based combat and roguelike progression from the folks behind Slay the Spire-rivalling deckbuilder Monster Train will mark its full release with a new questline and final boss for its story, as well as a bunch of other additions and improvements.

Inkbound first popped up in 2022 as a very promising sophomore effort from Shiny Shoe, putting a turn-based spin on the top-down roguelike battles of your Hades-a-likes as your magical-writing-gifted Needless sets off into the world to try and stop stories from fading away.

You won’t necessarily be doing that alone, with Inkbound allowing up to three others players to join you on your adventures. Those runs will be familiar to anyone with an hour (or a hundred) in games like Dead Cells, offering up a gradual stack of temporary upgrades across each run that reset each time you start afresh.

After impressing our Ed with its snappy combat - albeit with having more people sometimes making things harder rather than easier - Inkbound launched into early access on Steam last May. Since then, its devs have continued to expand it with new gameplay content while polishing up what was already there, adding everything from new quests and trinkets to an offline mode, daily challenges and stats for your runs. They also removed the game’s microtransactions after criticism from the community.

There’s more to come when Inkbound hits 1.0 on April 10th, with Shiny Shoe outlining a new questline, Rise of the Unbound, that will serve as a finale to Inkbound’s story - complete with a final boss to battle. Throughout the story there’ll be further narrative improvements and tweaks via new cutscenes, full voice acting and faster, more meaningful progression.

Elsewhere, there’ll be various quality-of-life updates including general balancing, complete controller support and full offline support, making it more suitable for playing on the Steam Deck without an internet connection. The game’s random elements have also been adjusted, heavily reducing the frustration of RNG during quests.

Ahead of the 1.0 launch in April, Shiny Shoe are running a sale on Inkbound until March 6th, knocking 20% off its current £16.75 price tag. After that, the standard price will go up to $30, so it’s probably worth grabbing it sooner than later if you’re interested.