There Will Be Ink

There Will Be Ink is a tactical action game for 1–8 players, played solo or with friends. You command stick-figure armies battling across paper notepads, where cover and troop positions matter: charging straight into combat rarely wins. You can also switch to Arcade Mode to run and shoot without the same tactical demands.

Command your troops

You can take control of any friendly unit on the battlefield. Units gain experience and level up during battles, becoming more capable: they may go prone to evade danger, take cover while attacking, and dodge rockets and grenades. Ranks also improve attributes such as stamina, ammunition capacity and weapon accuracy, and affect how quickly a unit raises or lowers a flag to capture a building.

Running, rolling and throwing grenades use stamina. When a unit runs out, it becomes exhausted and must pause briefly to recover. You earn experience points during battles and training credits even when you lose. Outside battles, you can spend experience on unit-specific and global training, weapon upgrades, and headquarters abilities such as ammunition drops, paratroopers and air strikes.

Missions and maps

The game includes 56 missions across three campaigns. Missions range from direct assaults to base-building with engineers, prisoner rescues behind enemy lines with a lone sniper, fights against defecting forces, boss battles, and battles at sea, at night or on a ski slope.

You can create battlefields in the map editor, or use Quick Battle to enter a randomly generated map by setting variables with sliders and toggles. These include troops and buildings, trees, debris and rivers. The campaign generator creates a series of progressively harder missions across different landscapes based on your chosen parameters.

Battlefield details

Battlefields change during combat: you can wade across rivers and take cover behind trees, rocks, sandbags and craters. Rain, wind and smoke from burning buildings and trees affect the battlefield. Craters, shells and spilled red ink remain as a record of each fight, while end-of-battle statistics provide a numerical summary.

Multiplayer

Local multiplayer supports up to eight players, who can play together or against each other. Teams can play through a full campaign, a Quick Battle or a player-created map. In campaign missions already won, players can join the enemy team for an extra challenge. Players can compare end-of-battle statistics and earn badges for feats such as the most kills, longest streak, most deaths avenged, most deaths or most medics killed. Online play is available through Steam Remote Play Together. Players can also join a battle already in progress.

Troops and oddities

As you play, you unlock recruit types including rifle infantry, assault infantry, snipers, medics, RPG troops, heavy machine gunners, engineers, laser jetpack troops and flamethrowers. The battlefield also features T-Rexes with jetpacks and a maniacal Yeti.