Hi, Inklings!


I wanted to share a heartfelt thank you to all of you for supporting the Shiny Shoe team and for the past year! Inkbound has such a special place in my and the other team members’ hearts. Although we aren’t able to continue forward with Inkbound as we would have liked, we’re very proud of what we accomplished and how we were able to finish the game.

To celebrate Inkbound’s first anniversary, I’ve asked a few of the designers for their favorite mechanics, characters, and/or moments from back in Inkbound developments.

Fan Art from the Vault:

A weekly highlight for myself and the rest of the Shiny Shoe team are ‘Fan Art Fridays.’ This is pretty much what it sounds like. On Fridays, I share community news along with any fan art players made. Here are a few of my favorites!

As a dev, you don't often see fan art figurines and Leto did not disappoint! This is the first in a series of statuettes made by the amazing Leto. Check out their work here.

Nib and Bin are two of my favorite characters in Inkbound and Catlaxy really brought them to life! See the masterpiece here!

Want to see more? Check out the Steam page or check out the server! Although we’re moving all Shiny Shoe games to a more central server, [discord.gg]you can see fanart like this incredible imaginary class by Spark called ‘The Lamplighter’ on the original server![discord.com]

To celebrate our one year anniversary, I asked members of the Shiny Shoe team for a few of their favorite memories, moments, or features that made it (or didn’t make it) into the game. And they did not disappoint. Here are just a few:

When asked which character was his favorite, Art Director Will responded with a resounding ‘Star Captain!’ He continued to explain how the Starship of Terror world would always be closest to his heart.

“I just love Tron,” explained Will and mentioned how he drew from the science fiction movie to come up with the world. The process of worldbuilding, he said, was by far his favorite part of Inkbound’s development.

ModusPwnenz, in true designer fashion, was more focused on the mechanics. His favorite design challenge was the Vestige Sets. In his words, “Designing the Sets happened near the end of the project, I felt like there was a bunch of fun ideas coming together. They are something I'd like to explore again in a future project for sure.”

And, finally but certainly not least, CEO Mark Cooke was nostalgic for the dance parties held in the Atheneum.

“One of my favorite moments on the publishing side was trying to organize a bunch of people in the Atheneum to record some footage for a video - dance party next to the Gatekeeper!” said Mark. “We should really make him break out in dance too if enough people nearby are dancing.”

When I asked Mark what was he most proud of regarding Inkbound, he answered that he was proud of how Shiny Shoe had stepped up to the challenge of developing a game like Inkbound.

“It [Inkbound] was the first title we developed with centrally hosted multiplayer. That was a large technical challenge. On the game design side, our combination of free movement and simultaneous multiplayer actions while in a turn-based structure took a lot of effort to try to get right. Finally, it was also both challenging and fun to self-publish and develop our skills in that area.”

While Inkbound’s development might have come with its own set of challenges, it certainly resulted in unique and memorable fun! To experience the fun for yourself, join me TODAY at 12:00 PM PST for a special first anniversary livestream on Twitch![www.twitch.tv]

I hope to see you in the chat and thank you so much for supporting Inkbound and the Shiny Shoe team!