INK INSIDE
Ink Inside is an RPG with an expansive world and story presented like a Saturday morning cartoon. Go through the story of Stick, a one-armed drawing made in a sketchbook that is now under a leaky ceiling. The art style is a charming mix of sketch drawings and cartoon art full of animation. The combat is played out using dodgeballs and special abilities that you get throughout the game to defeat your foes, gross monsters made from the water damaging the sketchbook.
On your journey with Stick to learn more about himself, you will discover many different characters. Some are your friends who will help you in combat, and some are damaged drawings that must be defeated in dodgeball matches to stop them from taking over the notebook. This game is big on “show, not tell.” You will explore a large world of interesting areas and find what you need to do to save them all.
Battling through a dodgeball game is a unique idea for combat. You damage the enemies by throwing a dodgeball at them, or you can also get hands-on with melee combat. Throughout the game, you earn new power-ups for each character and new abilities to enhance your battles. Each character has special abilities to help Stick win any match they are challenged with. This makes for a fun combat experience that can be unique to you. After each battle, you are given a score to help fill your “Cool Moves” bar. When this is filled, you can activate it and break the barrier between Stick (and their friends) and the enemy, allowing you to storm in and obliterate them.
I talked to Richard Mansfield, the founder of Blackfield Entertainment and the mastermind behind the entire concept of this game. With a talented team of 8 people, he has been able to put together a game from an idea that came to him 15 years ago. He had originally pitched the script for the story to a few different entertainment companies for a cartoon TV show but later discovered that it was best fit as a video game. It was inspiring to hear how he never gave up, and when he needed to, he founded his own production company and brought the game to life. The approach to creating a video game based on a cartoon show where you play out the main character's journey really makes this game stand out among other RPG games you’ll find today. Mansfield would advise new creators to manage their time well and “kill your darlings” when needed. This means even though it is hard, be prepared to sacrifice the things you want and love to achieve the bigger project.
I highly recommend this game. The creator’s love and passion show through in the ability to make playing the game feel nostalgic — like you’re a kid curling up to watch your favorite TV cartoon on Saturday morning.
Jennie: It is day three of PAXWest and I'm here with Richard Mansfield and we are doing the game Ink Inside and I haven't been able to demo it yet but I'm very excited because I've seen some demos and it looks really fun, really cool and he’s been able to tell me a little bit about the story and everything and it seems something really immersive.
Richard: It is, I'm absolutely super passionate about it, too.
Jennie: Yeah!
Richard: Like when you mentioned immersion, the idea is we wanted to create a game that was a Saturday morning cartoon you play. Right?
Jennie: Yes.
Richard: So it is a game in the traditional sense. We have worlds, we have stages — right now we have like over 200 stages — but we decided to take away the stage select screen, and take away the world select screen, take away all the text that says “World 1-1, Stage 1-1”.
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: Instead, just make it so you just go from room to room and that's the next stage and slowly, as you play the game, you start realizing, “Wait, this is just this giant world, like Zelda that you explore and then play these cool dodgeball matches in.”
Jennie: Yeah! And I personally love that. It's one of my favorite parts of video games is going to each different place and experiencing the different environments. So what inspired you to make something like this?
Richard: So, great question. So I actually wrote a script for a kid's cartoon show way back in the day and then it was called Ink Inside and I had pitched it to a couple of studios out there that all thought it was a little too mature and then after doing some other stuff in Hollywood, specifically writing some cheesy action movies, but I decided to leave and I ended up getting into video games where I was the producer at Grumpyface Studios, they're awesome.
Jennie: Oh, yeah!
Richard: Yeah, like one of my heroes works there, he's my best friend, his name's Chris Graham, shout out.
Jennie: (laughs)
Richard: And while I was there, I got to work on Steven Universe: Unleash the Light, I got to work on Teen Titans, go figure, and I started realizing, “Hey, that script I wrote would probably work better as a video game than a TV show.”
Jennie: That’s awesome.
Richard: So we decided to say, “Hey, let's just do it ourselves.” and here we are.
Jennie: Yeah. And how long ago was that? When did you start the video game journey to adapt this to a video game?
Richard: I'd say two and a half years, three years ago.
Jennie: Okay! Yeah.
Richard: Yeah, and it was a hard journey too because immediately you had to jump from, “Okay, how do I think about these characters as characters in a TV show?” to “How do I think about them as characters in a video game?” and then drawing the action design of the video game based around that. People are very familiar with RPGs, but nowadays RPGs are very heavily leaning towards customization, which is great, but I wanted to be the traditional RPG where you role play as in this case the two main characters in the cartoon show Stick and Traff.
Jennie: Yeah, alright! So, are you kind of a big team, or how many people are in your team? What's going on there?
Richard: Yeah, we are a team of eight different people.
Jennie: Okay!
Richard: Yeah, so we have a pretty cool technical artist, a really amazing animator who also was also working with Grumpyface and did some really cool stuff for Steven Universe. Our art director is also over at Grumpyface. The reason our team is so big is because we're working on multiple games at the same time.
Jennie: Okay!
Richard: So this is just one of them, but it's absolutely, obviously, my passion project. But I like to lean into my team to tell me, “Hey, what do you guys think? How can we make this work better? Here's the idea, but you tell me how you think you can make that work the best.”
Jennie: Yeah!
Richard: They're just so incredibly talented, and they keep giving me these ideas that just blow my mind.
Jennie: Yeah!
Richard: And I mean, I would not be here if I did not have the team that I have, honestly.
Jennie: Yeah! Off the top of your head, what is one thing that surprised you that they came to you with that was like, “I would have never thought of that.”?
Richard: Honestly, our animator had the idea to animate everything on 2s and 3s, just like Spider-Verse.
Jennie: Oh! Yeah!
Richard: So the animation that you see, it looks a little bit choppy, but that's intentional. That mimics the old frame rates of old cartoons. And people are surprised because our game looks 2D, it's actually all 3D, rendered as 2D. And that then goes to our amazing programmer, Autumn. Autumn built this system that takes our 3D models and then flattens them into 2D characters. We draw a really cool shade around them and then place them in a pseudo-3D 2.5D world.
Jennie: Wow!
Richard: Yeah. And that blew my mind when those powers got combined: we have an amazing looking — like I think it's very obviously different than most games, but it very much is like, you know, attractive and it shows that we put a lot of thought and design into it. So yeah, that is definitely one of the bigger ones.
Jennie: Yeah, that's awesome. It's interesting because usually it goes the opposite way, where it starts out as 2D and then they make it into 3D.
Richard: Yes, right?
Jennie: So that's interesting that you guys are doing the opposite.
Richard: Yeah.
Jennie: And so, is there anything (when you were beginning this project) that you would have told yourself? (laughs) You laugh.
Richard: (laughs) Yes, there's a ton of things. One: plan for more time.
Jennie: Okay.
Richard: Two: there's a saying that when you're working on anything creative, whether it's a movie or a video game or whatever, you have to “kill your darlings.” That means you have to let go of things you really want. And for video games, it's always about scope creep. You have these big plans and you have to basically figure out, “Well, which one of those plans do I actually have the time and money to get accomplished?”, right?
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: So my advice to myself in the past would be simply, load that shotgun full of a lot of shells, because you're going to be killing a lot of your darlings. (laughs)
Jennie: (laughs) Yeah…
Richard: And that’s whats real. Be prepared.
Jennie: And be prepared, yeah.
Richard: Yeah, I have a really sad graveyard in my backyard that just brings me to tears.
Jennie: Oh.
Richard: But, I mean, honestly, with a little bit of luck, we're going to hit a lot of the bigger things we wanted to. And already with where the combat is right now — I'm very proud of where the story is, I'm very proud — I honestly couldn't be happier, but at the same time I have a bunch of roses I need to hang on these graves. You know? (laughs)
Jennie: (laughs) Yeah. And what is one thing — so it's day three of PAX —so have you been here all three days?
Richard: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I talk a lot, and it’s already loud, and my voice is gone, and tomorrow, I'm probably going to be mute. (laughs)
Jennie: (laughs) That's… I understand. What is the one thing that you've seen people do or experience in the gameplay that you didn't expect? You know?
Richard: Okay, great question. So, two things: one, obviously there are bugs. People always encounter a bunch of stuff. And that's nice, that's what these events are great for. You get to see what works and what doesn't, you get to see, “Oh, I never even thought of that. Oh, design-wise, it makes more sense to put people's attention here.” But then also, in addition to those bugs, it's play style. How are people taking your game and like playing it their way?
Jennie: Okay.
Richard: And a big part of the design of this game was basically giving people a lot of freedom with how they build their characters and play the game, but giving you a very diverse combat system that you have to like literally explore by playing. Our philosophy is like, show, not tell.
Jennie: That's awesome.
Richard: Yeah, yeah. And that's part of the whole cartoon show experience, you know? So we have a very deep mechanical system in this that you only learn about by exploring the world and talking to people or going on a mission and getting on a special item that then points you in the direction to doing a certain thing.
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: Our upgrade trees basically make it so you have to do a set of achievements to get one specific perk. But those achievements feed into different play styles.
Jennie: That’s cool. Oh, okay.
Richard: So if you like melee more than like dodgeball, you'll be beating people up and you'll have a list of achievements that's like, get this combo, do this particular move. And if you do all that, you then get a permanent perk where like melee now heals you. But all of that's modular so you can then mix and match it. You can now mix, “Hey, I have this cool melee perk because I did these achievements. Well, now I'm going to mix it with this other ranged perk, and now this person does both.” Or you can just love dashing, so now you can follow these other perks. It teaches you how to dash really well and you get the benefit of a permanent boost to your dashing abilities.
Jennie: Oh, wow.
Richard: But I'm sorry, I also forgot the question. What was the question? (laughs) I was like, what am I answering?
Jennie: (laughs) It was, what is something that surprised you about the general public's gameplay?
Richard: Oh, yes. Thank you. That is actually something that's building into something. So here's the big surprise. It was there is a very high skill ceiling on this game. It's something we've noticed. Me and my, our programmer Autumn, we're crazy good at the game. So like when it comes to balancing the enemies, you found it's really hard because we balance to what we think is easy and the rest of our dev team can't even play the game.
Jennie: Oh no! (laughs)
Richard: They're like, “Oh, we're like dying on the demo boss.” So we basically started really learning the difficulty and we're very happy with where it's at now. Most people seem to pick up and play it. But the thing that surprises me the most is that high skill ceiling, some people immediately figure the game out and they're there within minutes.
Jennie: Oh, interesting.
Richard: And like it took me and Autumn months and months and months and months to play in this game to get this good. Other people pick it up and it's like they've been playing it for years. And they're literally doing techniques we don't teach you. They're just figuring it out by messing with the controls.
Jennie: Yeah. (laughs)
Richard: I remember I said, “Show not tell.” So, all the mechanics are pretty much there from the start. You know, after a few tutorials or events. But then it's up to you to kind of figure those mechanics out. We just give them to you, we just don’t tell you. But if you’re just playing around, we’re not gonna tell you, “Hey, jump and hit melee.” But if you do, you'll start noticing, “Oh, you do like a slam attack. Oh, that slam attack stuns people. Oh, if I stun people, I can then do a finish roll on them?” Like, you can only find out by experimenting. But we just didn't expect anyone to experiment so fast and figure out all of it.
Jennie: (laughs) Yeah.
Richard: Like, literally there is this one 14-year-old kid that came to our kiosk, sat down, and beat the entire demo without losing, including the final boss, he beat it on his first try.
Jennie: Oh my gosh.
Richard: Which is something I haven't even been able to do yet. Like, that's after literally cutting that boss's HP in half. (laughs)
Jennie: (laughs) Oh my gosh.
Richard: Yeah, and I still couldn't do it. And this kid's like, “Oh, I understand everything. I know all the mechanics and I’m a master at it.” I'm like, “You've been playing it for 20 minutes.”
Jennie: Yeah. (laughs)
Richard: So the thing that surprised me is how fast people are adapting to what I thought was such a new experience, but it would take a while. So, yeah, the big thing is now is that I'm questioning, are we onboarding players too slowly?
Jennie: Yeah, right.
Richard: Because we have, you know, it's a big RPG. There's a lot of dialogue. I mean, it's fun. We make it entertaining. It's a cartoon, so it's voice acted too. But the thing is now I'm worried, like, well, should we just add a bunch of skip buttons in case we have another kid like that playing? Who's just like, “Let me get past all that and beat the boss? Let me just do that."
Jennie: Yeah, right. Which, I mean, is maybe good for having options for different kinds of people.
Richard: Yes.
Jennie: Because I know that my big thing is I'm not great at video games. I love them, but I'm hardly ever amazing at it. So it's always nice to have a game that's like, I can still play it, but then also for the people that are amazing, they have a tier that they can do.
Richard: Yeah, that’s a great point to bring up. Because as we're playing this, the one thing we were debating way early on is, “What do we put at difficulty scale on?”
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: Because there is a really awesome casual aspect to our game. Like the story, you can just experience by walking around town and talking to people. But I don't want to make it painful for people that just want to like, chill, to go into this combat and be like, “Well, now I can't do this because I'm not like a Twitch fighter.” You know?
Jennie: Yeah, yeah. Well, and do you know when this is coming out? Or is it to be determined?
Richard: It’s chronically to be determined.
Jennie: Okay.
Richard: Currently it is. We do have a plan. We could be launching this November. That early.
Jennie: Oh! Okay. (laughs)
Richard: Yes, right? But, there are a lot of features I want to do. And part of the amazingness that is PAX is it lets you get to connect with people that kind of see your vision and believe in it and help you out. So with a little luck, some of the connections I made will pan out. And if that's the case, we'll probably be coming out early next year in January or February. So hey, look for us in November. Or if not, then early next year, please.
Jennie: Yeah, I saw Wishlist on Steam. So first way to know when it comes out, Wishlist it on on Steam.
Richard: Yes, please. (laughs)
Jennie: (laughs) And isn't there an option to notify me when this game's released? Yeah.
Richard: One hundred percent. And we are planning on being on Switch too.
Jennie: Okay, on Switch.
Richard: If we get lucky, it'll be very early, like very soon too.
Jennie: Oh, yay.
Richard: I mean, while we literally built it for the Steam Deck, and the Switch is an obvious sister.
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: Well, the thing about the Steam Deck is, one, amazing. But Valve isn't making games specifically for it. You know, when Nintendo built the Game Boy and here's Tetris, here's Mario. They built the Switch, and there's like, oh yeah, by the way, here's Mario and Zelda and everything you want. It's also a handheld and a sit-down console. But there's always a killer app on each console, on each portable. And I don't know if there's a killer app on the Steam Deck yet. Maybe Vampire Survivors. It's pretty amazing from what I’ve seen.
Jennie: I mean. Yeah.
Richard: But we kind of want to try to, like, you know, get on the Steam Deck in a way that makes us the app that's like, “Oh, this is the perfect game for the Steam deck.”
Jennie: Okay.
Richard: So like, honestly, from the ground up, we want this thing to be portable. And even though it looks beautiful, all the assets are hand-drawn. We literally made sure it performs as best as it possibly can.
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: Like, since we come from, like, mobile development, we kind of know what works and what doesn't. And even though the game's gorgeous, there's like barely any lighting in it, just so it can run better.
Jennie: Wow.
Richard: Yeah, seriously.
Jennie: Well, that's impressive. Because it looked really good to me.
Richard: When you draw everything, you can also draw lights. (laughs)
Jennie: Yeah, there you go. Yeah. And so are there any other events that you are doing that you know of?
Richard: Ah, well, there's a few. I can mention that we do have a Kickstarter. It's going live tomorrow.
Jennie: Okay.
Richard: Yeah, and it's going to be lasting for a month, obviously. But it's very low. It's just for localization. I love the game. There's a lot of dialogue and I just want it to get in the hands of as many people as possible.
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: And part of that is like localization. And localization is a lot more difficult than people realize. It's not just translating the text. It's really making sure that everything about the game works in different regions. And someone just pointed it out with like, when you kill an enemy, it basically has this giant poof of purple smoke. And what it says can be a very derogatory term in a different language.
Jennie: Oh no!
Richard: Yeah, so localization would point that out. So, 100%, it would be nice to have enough money to know everywhere where we might actually be insulting people. (laughs)
Jennie: Yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Richard: But the other place is — in addition to PAX — we have been at a couple of shows and I'm pretty sure we'll be in a few more. But I don't know if I can actually say any of the other ones. So… (laughs)
Jennie: That's okay. (laughs) Don’t get yourself in trouble.
Richard: I'm going to say “Hey, Steam Deck. That's set to drop.” Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jennie: That's awesome. So you're experiencing so many people all the time.
Richard: Oh, yeah, we got great placement. And the feedback from them is amazing.
Jennie: Oh god.
Richard: Everyone that plays is just like, “This looks great.” People come by and say, “This is the highlight of my PAX.” Like, I'm beyond flattered.
Jennie: Yeah, yeah.
Richard: The thing is, most of the time my brain is like, “Everything's broken. Don't play the games. In two months everything will be fixed.” (laughs)
Jennie: (laughs)
Richard: So it's been very, as far as like uplifting, it is definitely the wind in the sails we need.
Jennie: Oh, good.
Richard: But the thing is, it's getting very difficult to be noticed these days. So, yeah.
Jennie: Yeah, yeah.
Richard: You know art style helps, the play style helps, but also just making sure people are just willing to try it.
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: So we have a pretty big demo on Steam, that's kind of our attempt at being like, “Hey, if you want to know if this game is for you, you can actually play like the first 25% right now.”
Jennie: Oh, good. Yeah.
Richard: We're going to eventually put up a combat demo and that full demo will be in a few other places. We want people to be able to play it before they're like, “Is this something I really want to try?”
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: And then we figure, “Hey, let's just remove the barrier of money.” It's just like a big chunk of the game, two hours of play, if you love it then let us know how much you do by buying the full thing.
Jennie: Yeah, that's a great idea.
Richard: Thank you.
Jennie: Yeah. So anything else you wanted to add or anything?
Richard: The big thing is like, you know, when it comes to designing something unique, it's not just the look, it's the experience. And from the ground up, we wanted it not just to feel like you're playing a cartoon, we wanted the actual combat to feel unique too.
Jennie: Okay.
Richard: And the idea is like, when you watch a cartoon — something you love. Something like, (I’ll throw out some of my favorites) Sailor Moon is great, obviously Avatar is great, but both of those have this really cool twist on a mechanic. Sailor Moon, you have, oh hey, there was this high school drama, but also she's a magical girl who fights evil. Right?
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: And now you have Avatar: The Last Airbender and it's like, oh hey, there's these cute kids that are like back in the day, but they're also kung fu experts that fight with elements, right?
Jennie: Yeah, yeah.
Richard: So, our game looks like a cartoon, plays as a cartoon, but the twist is everyone fights with a dodgeball. But it's thematically integrated into the story. The idea is that everyone there is a doodle that's trapped in a notebook (You've heard this picture before).
Jennie: (laughs) Yeah.
Richard: But everyone's a doodle trapped in a notebook, and that notebook is in a closet beneath a leaking ceiling, and that leaky ceiling turns all the doodles soggy. So, your mission is to knock the sog out of them with all these dodgeballs.
Jennie: Yeah.
Richard: And if we basically approach it the way a cartoon would, you would not just have combat; you'd have these nice little moments where you have these sincere character interactions. So, we put in this new mechanic where every time you want to heal, it's not go to an inn, it's not like pass at a campfire. At any moment, anywhere in the game, you can press and hold B and your characters sit down, and they can just chill. And you can heal by hitting the right trigger. And then, what we did, is we made it so depending on what you've done in the game, your characters might start to have conversations about it.
Jennie: Okay.
Richard: So you have this little moment of downtime after combat where you learn more about your characters, you learn more about the world. And that to me feels more like an organic cartoon that would play. So basically what I'm trying to say is, we really did some crazy design stuff in this that is unique that I hope people will resonate with. And if you like cartoons and you like video games, hopefully this is your jam.
Jennie: Alright. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Richard: Thank you so much. Seriously. I can tell you're just as tired as me.
Jennie: Yeah. (laughs)
Richard: At this point your brain is soup. You’re like, “Yes.”
Jennie: Yes, a little bit, but... Yeah.
Richard: Can I shake your hand, is that okay?
Jennie: oh yeah! Thank you.
Richard: Thank you!
