As someone who’s no expert on art, I can’t always appreciate a painting or drawing the way some people can. What I can recognize is how cool art-style backdrops would be as levels in a mobile game, which is why …
As someone who’s no expert on art, I can’t always appreciate a painting or drawing the way some people can. What I can recognize is how cool art-style backdrops would be as levels in a mobile game, which is why Inklings caught my eye.
Its creator, Applepine Games, describes Inklings as “a beautiful Lemmings-style puzzler featuring artsy hand drawn and painted levels.” The Inklings themselves are small round beings with glasses (maybe being too close to the art is having detrimental effects on their vision?) who need your help to get to the goal of each level, which appears to be a pretty literal hole in reality.
As you can see in the trailer below, guiding the Inklings through each hand-drawn or painted level takes some doing, thanks to the varied nature of the backgrounds and a host of interesting game mechanics.
The way the characters interact with their environment looks extremely engaging, as you can see the Inklings erasing parts of the paintings, shifting objects around, using portals and much more. Physics also appear to be variable, which, let’s face it, is kind of what you’d expect if you were sucked into a painting. Not that I’ve thought about that since Mary Poppins, mind you.
In any case, Inklings is on the way for both iOS and PC/Mac on October 6. It’s already got a Steam page to call its own and an official site, and since it’s a “pay one price” affair and not free-to-play, you may want to consider setting aside a few bucks for the App Store if this tickles your artistic fancy.
