Realm Of Ink is an isometric roguelite that clearly takes inspiration from Hades, but what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in action and variety. Hades, like Vampire Survivors, Grand Theft Auto 3, and Doom, has helped spawn or radically change its genre. Although roguelites are far from rare these days, Hades and its sequel began a trend for renewed focus on plot, expressive hand-drawn art styles, and stylish fast-paced combat. Realm Of Ink has plenty of its own ideas, but Hades' influence is visible everywhere, from the isometric viewpoint and faux Chinese ink brush visuals to high-precision, lightning-fast battles in procedurally generated rooms.
Gameplay and Combat
In the grand tradition of roguelites, each room exit gives you some choice about where to go next, typically deciding between lower challenge and reward versus more enemies and better upgrades. These come in several varieties. Short-term buffs last just two rooms, while others enhance your entire run. Because stat boosts stack, careful selection can lead to astronomical damage numbers, though that focus may neglect other factors. This regularly creates a glass cannon effect or the opposite, where you are heavily shielded but take time to whittle down enemies and bosses.
Loot drops at the end of each room's battles are joined by regular enemy-free shopping areas, where you can buy healing meals and upgrades for your ink relics. You can hold two relics at a time, each granting a special move and boosts to attack, defence, status effects, and enhancements for your pet, Momo. Momo is an essential part of your offensive arsenal, changing form to match equipped relics and benefitting from its own buffs, perks, and special abilities with a separate cooldown. This gives combat a continually changing shape and rhythm, also powerfully affected by the fighter you choose for each run.
Characters and Progression
When you die, your spirit is swallowed by a celestial fox that deposits you back at the Spirit Fox Inn, where you can add permanent upgrades, practise combat moves, and select different fighters for your next run. These unlock as you progress, and each of the all-female roster fights differently. Red, your heroine and starter, is soon joined by Violetta, whose heavy attack throws spinning chakrams. After that, there is A'kuan, who uses a long staff, and many others. Each has a distinct feel and cadence to their attacks, and you will undoubtedly find favourites among the slowly expanding line-up. These are likely to change over time as you discover new ink relics and experiment with different build specialisms. We found A'kuan's relentless heavy attacks paired beautifully with a focus on higher critical chance, making her an absolute powerhouse against bosses, but Realm Of Ink has plenty more to offer.
Initially feeling relatively easy, you earn access to higher difficulty levels, which also supply better rewards and additional fox blood, the currency used to gain permanent upgrades at the Inn. Each run feels inspiringly different from the last thanks to the huge variety of artefacts you acquire, which don't just confer stat buffs but also add stacking perks that often interact with one another, building daunting boosts as you progress.
Story and Presentation
The final part of Hades' influence is its focus on plot and character, an area where Realm Of Ink isn't quite as successful. Red is trapped in the pages of a magical book, needing to defeat all the bosses, and eventually the fox, to escape. The people and animals you meet along the way are often fantastical but rarely memorable, their part-voiced, part-animated anime styling never feeling particularly distinctive. Actually making your escape is in no way the end; the game proves far more interested in its rapid and increasingly insane combat than in the details of its story. Its focus is battles that get more intense as you unlock and stack short-term and enduring buffs, your heroines unleashing screen-filling attacks, the resulting damage numbers moving ever higher as you upgrade.
It takes a few runs to get to know its various systems, but once you do, upgrade selections become more targeted and intentional. The game's generous allowance for rerolls lets you have good control over your growing powers. You will also be given opportunities to sacrifice hit points in return for legendary relics. Sometimes that simply means giving away, say, 70% of your energy bar, but other times it can mean cutting your maximum HP for the entire run. On those occasions, you will be given something genuinely game-changing in return, and we almost always took those opportunities when offered, even when it meant squeaking through a few rooms attempting to build hit points back up.
The highest levels of magic items provide dramatic enhancements, from surrounding your warrior with spinning blades to massive stacks of extra damage for you and your pet. Bosses leave bigger drops, although quite a few have a habit of dying, then instantly returning with a full energy bar and more powerful attacks. That is offset by the initially forgiving difficulty, which makes each strike feel both fluid and deadly. Given the centrality of its fighting system, that is definitely a good thing.
Verdict
Its plot might not be all that diverting, but the action in Realm Of Ink is relentless. Your discovery of new artefacts gives each run its own identity as you test and refine its many fighting styles. The addition of your ink pet and its twin relic-based special moves make for interesting tactical decisions as you create and tweak builds to take on its addictive and constantly changing battles.
Realm Of Ink review summary
In Short: A Hades-inspired action roguelite with a similar isometric view, pacy combat, and Chinese ink brush visuals, whose addictive action makes up for a lacklustre storyline.
Pros: Astonishing flexibility in builds and fighting styles that take advantage of precise, responsive controls. Interesting diversity of enemies and bosses.
Cons: Plot and characters fail to make an impression, and it can feel a little too easy before you have unlocked higher difficulty levels.
Score: 7/10
Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £19.99
Publisher: 4Divinity
Developer: Leap Studio
Release Date: 26th May 2026
Age Rating: 7
