Inked Reviews
By the time the credits roll you'll likely still have some hidden paintings to find, and even if you leave them behind, this is a thoroughly pleasant and satisfying experience on Nintendo's system. With smart puzzles, beautiful presentation and a story full of emotive moments, Inked: A Tale of Love is well worth your time.
Short, undemanding and nicely constructed, Inked: A Tale of Love is a couple of hours well worth exploring.
There is a lot of potential here for a great idea and certain moments are truly awesome, but the whole experience just doesn't hold up and ends on a low point. If you have a stronger stomach for finicky controls, though, Inked might just be the game for you.
Simple but satisfying platform puzzles combined with some stunning hand drawn artwork make for a brief but emotional and entertaining adventure which dares to try something new.
Uniquely hand-drawn and detailed, Inked is a love story set in a beautiful world that feels minimalistic and simple, yet full of life and stories to tell. A comforting tale that touches on deeper life meanings while introducing creative puzzles to solve, this short and sweet game demands just the right amount of attention from the player. Unpredictable movements and controls make the experience feel less smooth, but the linear paths make it easy to know where our hero needs to go. It is a rewarding couple of hours well spent for those looking for a soothing and wholesome adventure.
Inked is a puzzle platform with a unique artistic direction which suffers, however, from a very inaccurate control system.
Review in Italian | Read full review
A Visual and Storytelling Delight
The value of Inked lies above all in the ability to stage a small story of love and suffering by means of a very personal style and excellent visual impact. The Journey of the Hero - and, in parallel, of its creator - is a magnificent oriental painting in motion to which the refinement of a few touches of digital ink is enough to shape a truly enchanting glance.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Overall, the different gameplay elements blend together to create something quite unique.
Visually and audibly gorgeous, Inked battles to maintain its level of quality through an awkward camera, occasional obtuse puzzles and fumbled story
Bold, distinctive and flawed, Inked is nonetheless a worthy addition to your puzzle library.
Inked offers up a selection of well constructed logic puzzles set alongside a well made, though potentially familiar feeling plot.
Without spoiling any more of the story, Inked will take you on an adventure of grief, loss, and healing. It does, as stated in the beginning, what good art should do: provoke thought and feeling. It is gorgeous in its presentation, but flawed in some of the execution of its gameplay features and controls. Even with its flaws, Inked is a satisfyingly paced game with a descent length of around 4 - 5 hours that throws new challenges at you as you play.
While it can be a downgrade and mimicry of the original 2018 release, Inked: A Tale of Love is a pleasant experience due to its superb artistry and laid-back puzzling. It may only be a few hours long, but it does not outstay its welcome, letting you finish mostly satisfied.
Inked: A Tale of Love is a dynamic game that evolves without delay, with constant gameplay innovations and challenges at a reasonable level of difficulty. It is simple and short (maybe too little and too short) and has a beautiful story that many can relate to, and manages to convey morale and a little hope at the end.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Its clever premise, powerful narrative (flawed though it may seem at times), and enjoyable mechanics - Inked's flaws come across as mostly minor nitpicks.
Inked tries in earnest to make a small folk tale into a wider allegory about creative expression, and though admirable in theory, the self-reflexive bent ultimately hinders the sense of unease it creates through its pleasantly hand-drawn realm.
The slight issues may seem like a deal breaker for some, but truth be told, the good outweighs the bad by a mile. The story and the art style will keep gamers going despite some puzzles appearing to be unsolvable. It just takes a bit more patience to get the most out of this game. All the puzzles in the game are solved by a combination of the shapes. There are no exceptions. As a gamer, sometimes it is better to take a step back and consider the options instead of giving up trying to force a solution that might work. And because of this, I can safely recommend this game to people who enjoy a good story, solving puzzles, and to those who are into precision platforming.
Inked is a simple mobile game to make your free time more enjoyable. In addition to beautiful graphics and pleasant background music, it will also offer you a strongly emotional story, at the end of which you may not be able to avoid a little tears. It's just a pity that we didn't get more challenges in the form of harder puzzles or longer game time. You can finish the title in 2-3 hours, which isn't much, but it's quite enough to convey a strong message. No matter what bad things happen to you in life, you just have to move on and not wallow in your pain forever.
Review in Czech | Read full review
Inked: A Tale of Love is a moving, if rather short, puzzle adventure that does not attempt to revolutionize the experience but delivers a lovely time through very well designed levels and a unique visual world. The difficulty does not stand out, as the purpose is not to present players with a painstaking challenge, but the way this relaxing and touching experience is implemented is nothing short of remarkable. Pity for its very short length.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review