Inkbound update for 18 September 2023

Hey everyone, Redbeard/Brendan here with another lore update! This time with a peek into something I’m personally excited for in one of our future updates: Vestige Lore!

As I mentioned in my previous post, there's a lot of lore for the world of Inkbound both because it’s necessary to create a believable world but also because it’s just fun to write. Since there's so much of it, though, and it often doesn't relate directly to what's happening in the game or with characters at the time, I still wanted a way to expose some of those less-relevant-but-still-interesting facts for those who wanted to dive deeper into the world of Inkbound.

In our previous game, Monster Train, we had a similar feature: all cards, enemies, and items in the game had lore/flavor text that you could read and learn a little bit more about the card/enemy/item/thing itself and how it fits into the larger world. In Inkbound, we've taken the same approach to our vestiges: not only giving them flavor text but designing their visuals from the ground up with that lore in mind. We always want each new asset in the game, whether it be a Vestige, Trinket, character, Book, or Aspect to feel grounded in the game universe and that means making sure that the visual design for those assets has a strong lore foundation to give it context in the larger world of Inkbound.

That's not to say that the gameplay design of these items isn't what ultimately drives the creation of new vestiges, aspects, etc. (it often is), but that once the gameplay details have solidified a bit, I can come in and provide some in-world context for "why" this new thing exists in the world. So, in a sense, the lore for all of these vestiges has always existed, we're just polishing it up and making it visible now!

Here are a few examples:

The Dam wasn’t all bad, just mostly. The original intention of the DARVe, to study the written creations for sentience, was a noble one. It was just led by people who couldn’t handle the chaos that ensued.

It’s a pretty tremendous undertaking, the cataloging of the Atheneum, so it’s no surprise it only happens maybe once an Age. Didn’t stop those Counselors from reindexing the whole damn library, though. Gave each book a chit and everything for easier retrieval. Takes all the fun out of the hunt, I say!

A gift from Allyra with the inscription: “Perhaps we were wrong”. Sent to Allyas, no doubt. How juicy! Lys bet me those two would get back together someday, and this feels like sure proof that they haven’t yet! Lys doesn’t agree… As to what they were wrong about, your guess is as good as mine.

Ahh, another memory best left forgotten. The poor couple’s introduction to the shadows and the Whispers. Oh, it was a carnival once upon a time, but after Witt… left… it became something much darker.

There used to be more of us. Lots more Binders if you can imagine! It really put a squeeze on the Ink going around, though. So these little badges were given to Trackers for the Vowed to exempt them in their use of Bindings.

So, there are a few things that are important when designing a vestige and the lore around it:

1. Where does this vestige come from? Is it from the Atheneum? Another world that's been written? Answering this first helps narrow down from designing 'anything' to 'fewer things.' In the case of ‘Predator’s Quintessence’, we knew it would be related to a sci-fi world (the Derelict Starship DARVe from our most recent update!) so that narrowed down the possibilities significantly to something related to that book.

2. How can the visual design closely match and convey the gameplay function as closely as possible? This will usually determine more specifics of 'what' the vestige actually is/does/looks like. The “Predator’s Quintessance’ vestige started with the gameplay prompt: “When you kill an enemy, you permanently deal more damage.” Knowing that this vestige would be connected to the Starship, it made sense to have the vestige relate to one of the captured predators aboard the DARVe, the Thantaloupe (an enemy you can also fight in the latest update!).

3. How does the surrounding universe support this item existing? Is there something that already exists in the world that could be used as an opportunity to reveal more lore or story about the world? This is where the vestige design starts to go from something 'normal' to something 'Inkbound'. It's where we make sure that the item feels rooted in our universe and not something that could just be found anywhere. Cheesecards were a concept for a long time that I wanted to find a place for in our vestiges and putting the visual design to this vestige seemed like a decent spot for it. It’s certainly a vestige where the mechanics tie to the visuals a bit more loosely, but the payoff it gives in terms of worldbuilding makes up for it.

4. What does our lore writer have to say about it? Lore on its own can be interesting, but it's even more compelling when told through the lens of a character within the game; a narrator that can have their own opinions on what they're talking about to reveal information about character dynamics and other tidbits that might not be possible if the same information were just delivered as plain facts. In Inkbound, all lore is written from the perspective of the Chronicler.

Once all this lore and visual description has been written and any additional reference is collected, it's sent to our very talented artists to make my ugly words into something awesome to look at!

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I hope this gives you a bit more insight into how I design the initial visuals for our vestiges and the lore that supports them as well as give you a little sneak peek into the massive lore dump coming in the not-too-distant future!

We’ll have more details for you as we get closer to launching this new feature, but until then, thanks again for playing Inkbound and see you in the Atheneum!