Inkulinati is a Turn-Based Tactics game created by Yaza Games and published through Daedalic Entertainment, which casts the player as one of the titular Inkulinati, medieval scribes who battle each other with animated drawings made of living ink, facing the world with their armies of knightly rabbits, thieving foxes, sneering devils, and stranger creatures. The game entered early access in 2023 and was fully released in February 2024.
Gameplay pits your force of Beasts against an enemy one, with up to five creatures being allowed on-screen per side at a time. Most battles during story mode are either Beast versus wild Beast, where a finite number of creatures is placed on-screen for both sides, or Tiny versus wild Beast, where a diminutive avatar of the Inkulinati joins the fray and can draw in additional creatures for their side. Beast versus wild Beast battles end when all combatants on one side are dead; if a Tiny is on the field, their side instead loses when the Tiny dies. At the end of each segment of the game, the player faces a boss Inkulinati, whose Tiny also takes to the page of battle.
On the battlefield, the player and AI have a variety of resources and obstacles to navigate. Droplets of Living Ink are the primary resource, as gathering them allows Inkulinati to draw more creatures and wild Beast forces to regenerate their health. Random items clutter the battlefield as obstacles, while explosive pots, Hell's Maws, clouds of fire, and other items can harm or kill incautious Beasts.
Visually, the game is inspired by drolleries, the elaborate doodles and decorations found on the edges of medieval manuscripts, which it replicates both in art style and the specific beasties and chimeras that make up its unit roster.
This work contains examples of:
- Action Bomb: Exploders are so named because they blow up on command or when they die, damaging beasts in adjacent spaces; the Cook Exploder can feed other Beasts to make them bloated, giving them the same ability. If they're eaten by Sir Snail, he will burp out their explosion as a three-space breath weapon.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: In the Fires of the Apocalypse event, which starts when a battle wears on for too long, gouts of fire form at the edges of the field and start moving inwards by one space per turn, destroying any Beasts, Tinies, or items that get caught in them.
- Bandit Mook: When Foxes land a successful attack on an enemy Beast, one drop of ink is removed from the enemy's pool and added to the player's.
- Bare-Bottomed Monkey: Apes are shown with prominently displayed buttocks.
- Bottomless Pits: The edges of each level of play open up into the abyss. Any object, Beast, or Tiny, including flying units, that is pushed off the edge falls into the nothingness and is instantly destroyed.
- Breath Weapon: Cerberus and the Dragon can spit out a trio of fireballs as a ranged attack.
- Cunning Like a Fox: Foxes are weaker than some other units that fill their roles in battle, but, in keeping with the fox's stereotype as a trickster, they can steal ink from the enemy.
- Damage Over Time: The Bleeding condition, such as are caused by the attacks of Devils or by Inkulinati with the Thorned Fingers talent when moving enemy Beasts or Tinies around, causes affected units to lose a little health at the end of every chapter.
- The Dead Can Dance: Skeletons are heavily themed around music. Each variant is "armed" with a different instrument, such as a flute, triangle, trumpet, or drums, which they use to force enemies to dance the danse macabre.
- Edible Ammunition: Bean Exploders throw beans as a ranged attack. The Cook Exploder carries around a pot of flaming beans, which work as explosive projectiles instead.
- Flying Face: In contrast to their more complete counterparts, Head Exploders are simplistic floating heads, while Trumpet-Playing Skeletons are nothing more than a floating skull and hand. They're counted as flying units as a result.
- Fartillery: The Devils' Pyroflatulence attack creates a cloud of fire sparks behind them.
- Funny Animal: The majority of the Beasts are animals of some variety, which walk around like people, wear a few articles of clothing, and carry weapons and other tools.
- The Grim Reaper: Death, a grinning, crowned, and scythe-wielding skeleton, is the oldest and strongest Inkulinati and is fought as the final boss. He specializes in using the dancing skeleton family of Beasts, has the Thorned Fingers talent to harm enemy Beasts when he moves them around, and create crypts or plague clouds in spots where Beasts have been slain. He's also an incorrigible joker and party animal.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: As a rule, the Beasts never wear more than one or two bits of clothing, most commonly a headpiece such as a cap, hood, or bishop's mitre, or a belt.
- A Head at Each End:
- Devils have one head in the regular place and another in place of a bum.
- Bean Exploders have one human head at their front and a bird head at the end of their tails.
- Heal Thyself:
- Hares with Baskets can heal themselves by spending a turn to eat a puppy from the basket on their backs.
- Apes can use the Ape's Frenzy effect to remove infection from themselves.
- Hell Hound: Cerberus, the three-headed hound, is a powerful unit capable of hitting multiple enemies at once and spitting fireballs. Like Devils, he cannot be harmed by fire-filled spaces or eaten by Hell's Maws.
- Historical Domain Character: Most of the famous Inkulinati fought as bosses are real figures from medieval history, mostly writers, theologians, or both, such as Dante Alighieri, Saint Francis of Assisi, and Saint Hildegard of Bingen.
- Holy Burns Evil: Devils, Cerberus, and Beasts with the heretic status effect take additional damage from attacks done by anointed characters, such as bishops, Sheep Devotees, and Beasts with three levels of halo.
- Holy Halo: Haloes are gained by standing under the clouds of Heaven, praying, or being blessed by the player or by a bishop creature, and grant stat bonuses to their bearers. Up to three levels of halo can be gained; when the maximum is reached, the Beast is considered anointed, will cause enemies that strike it to become heretics, and will be able to deal increased damage to heretics and Devils. In an inversion, black haloes are gained by striking a bishop or a three-haloed Beast, and mark their bearers as heretics and make them extra-vulnerable to the attacks of the holy.
- Immune to Fire: Devils, Cerberus, and the Dragon do not take any damage for standing in a space occupied by sparks of fire. This will not protect them from bonfires or the Fires of the Apocalypse, however.
- Involuntary Dance: The attacks of musical skeletons cause enemy units to be struck by the danse macabre, which forces them to dance in place and, if struck again in this condition, randomly move a space to the side while taking damage.
- Living Drawing: The Beasts created by Inkulinati are explicitly living drawings, created with a special "living ink", and leave behind little blots of ink when they die.
- Mook Maker: Lairs periodically spawn Beasts at the start of a Chapter. They're divided in different kinds, which produce different creatures — King's Tents send out Dogs, Suspicious Trees produce Pigeons and Foxes, and Dens are home to Rabbits.
- Mooning: As a viable combat tactic. The Rabbits and Hares' special attack, "Here Comes the Butt", has them flash their buttocks in order to disorient an enemy beast and give it a headache, limiting its ability to act during its next turn.
- Multishot: "Hail of Arrows", the archer foxes' special attack, has them fire three arrows at once to hit up to three adjacent targets.
- Noble Wolf: Wolf Pilgrims, which first appear when fought in Francis' battle and are based on the Wolf of Gubbio tamed by the holy man, are religiously-minded lupines unique among the game units for never attacking. Instead, they race towards pilgrimage gates that will damage the enemy commander when reached.
- Odd Organ Up Top: One class of creatures, just called "Beasts", have hands in place of heads.
- One-Hit Kill: Being pushed off the edge of the stage, being swallowed by Sir Snail, or being in a space also occupied by hellfire or a Hell's Maw at the end of a chapter will kill a Beast or Tiny instantly, regardless of how much health they currently have. There is also an achievement for killing a creature from full health with a regular attack.
- Our Demons Are Different: Devils are hairy humanoids with horns, leering grins, and an extra face where their behind should be. They can fart fire out of their butt-faces to create permanent areas of flame, and specialize in using hooked or saw-edged weapons that inflict bleed effects. They are heretics by default, meaning that they take extra damage from the attacks of a bishop or a three-haloed Beast, but are immune to fire and will not be eaten by Hell's Maws.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The Dragon is a green, bipedal animal with two legs, two feathered wings, a long neck, and a head sporting pointed ears and a green goatee. It can breathe fireballs to attack from range and exhale plague clouds in front of itself, and cannot be harmed by either the plague or spaces filled by fire sparks.
- Signature Mon: Each of the bosses makes use of a particular theme or family of Beasts:
- Master specializes in using the Exploders, with whom he shares large pointed ears and a green coloration.
- Godfrey the knight chiefly uses the melee-oriented Dogs, alongside Donkey Bards.
- Hildegard, a medieval abbess and holy woman, uses Rabbits — pious beasts, who pray after each turn to give themselves divine favor — and Bishop Cats.
- Francis uses Pigeons and Wolf Pilgrims, reflecting his real-life counterpart's love of birds and taming of the Wolf of Gubbio.
- Dante uses Devils and Cerberus, in addition to fighting in a battlefield strewn with fiery areas and Hell's Maws.
- Death specializes in the various kinds of dancing skeletons.
- Smash Mook: Mace-Wielding Hares and Mighty Dogs are elite variants of their factions' basic melee units, with high health and attack power but little to no ranged play or special attacks. Instead, they use their heavy weapons to hit their enemies extra hard, leaving them stunned and disoriented in the hares' case or shoving them away in the dogs'.
- Straight for the Commander: A Tiny versus Beasts or Tiny versus Tiny battle will end only when one of the Tinies dies, regardless of how many Beasts are still on the field. In these contexts, the AI will heavily prioritize making a beeline for, and trying to kill, the player's tiny, often running past their Beasts to do so.
- Swallowed Whole: Snails can swallow enemy Beasts, Tinies, and obstacles in one go, instantly killing them regardless of their remaining health.
- Toilet Humor: Much like the drolleries that inspired it, the game's humor often takes a turn for the baser, such as in the rabbit and hare units having the ability to disorient enemies by mooning them, Donkey Bards doing the same by blowing their trumpets with their asses, and Devils creating fire hazards by farting.
- Warrior Monk: Rabbit warriors are characterized as very pious beasts and automatically pray at the end of each turn, which usually means that they carry at least one level of halo.
