How Inkle Infuse Narrative Games With British Personality And Player Agency

thegamer.com:

Inkle makes literary, immersive games, creating slightly fantastical worlds that retain a profoundly British sensibility, in their humour and whimsy. Founded in 2011 by Cambridge-based Joseph Humfrey and Jon Ingold, both of whom possess years of triple-A development experience with the likes of Sony and Rare, Inkle has set high standards for itself as an indie studio.

Its mobile title 80 Days – a steampunk riff on Jules Verne’s novel of nearly the same name – was Time magazine’s Game of the Year in 2014. It made Sorcery!, a well regarded adaptation of the RPG gamebooks by Steve Jackson. Its biggest game to date, Heaven’s Vault, arrived on PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC a few years ago, telling an ambitious narrative about deciphering a long-lost language in a futuristic yet historically evocative world.

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Inkle’s narrative designer and co-founder Jon Ingold tells me Heaven’s Vault “started from this idea of wanting to capture the sense of archaeology because we thought that was an interesting theme.”

It was his way of trying to capture the ambiguities of archaeology (Ingold’s father is involved with the discipline) where truths can shift constantly, and the language puzzles that make up the core of Heaven’s Vault meant players could come out with contradictory answers yet still reveal a version of the truth.

This ambitious title may be Inkle’s magnum opus, yet in this humble writer’s opinion it is not its best game. Instead, that accolade belongs to the absurdly fun Overboard. Available on iOS, Android, Steam, and Nintendo Switch, this inventive caper sees you play as Veronica, an American starlet who offs her husband, the wealthy Malcolm