Bendy and the Ink Machine

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☑ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☑ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☑ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

It might be kinda old. It might be arguably past its prime. And I may just be autistic and this game might be one of my special interests. But this game slaps.
This game is a classic for me. One of the prime games of growing up on the weird fandom side of the internet. I love the simplicities AND the complexities of it. It's pattern recognition yet it keeps you guessing. The depth of the storyline had me in a chokehold from the first time I cared to pay attention to it. The character designs are interesting. I love this stupid little indie horror game. 10/10.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☑ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☑ 10

---{ Author }---
☑

Bendy and the Ink Machine is a narrative driven first person adventure game, a blend of lightweight puzzle solving, occasional combat, mild exploration, scavenger hunts, but mostly storytelling. But not like a lousy visual novel where you're expected to wade through an ocean of text, this is a great example of the "show, don't tell" principle of good game design.
The game starts simply enough. You take on the role of Henry, a former employee at a 1930's era *cough*Disneyish*cough* animation studio. The game doesn't make a few sly jabs at the somewhat infamous back story of a rather well known animation studio and it's rather eccentric owner. Returning to the studio after some absence, you discover it's turned into a cartoon nightmare. Beloved cartoon characters emerge into twisted, real world versions of themselves. And they are not your friend.
To escape, you'll need to solve the mystery of the ink machine, and the owner of the studio's weird obsession with it. No spoilers, but eventually it does make a crooked, and sinister kind of sense.
And that's really the great thing about this is that the narrative pervades in the visual and audio design as well as the flow of the game. Everything looks and fits right, it's true to theme from beginning to end. That's how professionals do it. The real reason this game works is the principle of immersion, which is best accomplished by putting the gamer in the drivers seat, and most importantly, making everything fit so comprehensively that you don't get jarred out of the experience.
From a technical basis the heartfelt art style does make up for the less than bleeding edge graphics (some low poly count assets due to requirements for weaker gaming platforms than PC, once more a work of art skips out on masterpiece status due to console compromises). Movement is a bit plodding but balanced well enough, this isn't DooM, you're supposed to take in the scenery instead of blasting through it as quick as you can.
There's a lot of fun achievements for achievement hunters, too.
The ticket price is probably too high for a game that's maybe around 5 hours to finish, but you can get this for less than $5 if you watch for a sale, at which point it's totally worth the money.

A classic game from my childhood. Alongside Cuphead, these two would inspire me to create from when I was younger. I love this monochrome world and the fun characters we meet such as the angels, wolves, and demons. It was fun to explore and collect voice logs that expanded the world through the people that worked in this now abandoned studio. In chapter 3, it was so much fun to use the tommy gun, but it isn't so fun to try and get it.

I enjoy the gameplay and the story, the scares, the characters, and the adventure. On the other hand, some of the game's mechanics were not the best. The hitboxes and the weapon's range were sometimes clunky and it was always easy to get hit. Sometimes my game would lag, creating a disruption when I am trying to evade an enemy, and sometimes an obstacle would glitch such as a thick ink blob that became glitched into my paddle wheel in chapter 5.

Overall this game is great and I recommend this to those who love a good and extensive story.

A really good example of a well-done earlier "mascot horror" game before things became over saturated. I started playing the game before all chapters were released, so it's been fun to see the game as it evolved graphically and gameplay-wise. A wonderful visual style and neat character designs make a solid template to create more from.
My only major complaint is how the save system was broken for the final version of the game, which affects playthroughs where you save, leave, and come back. That hasn't stopped me from plugging 200+ hours into the game through all of its iterations, though!
Edit: They fixed the save bug one week after I left my review!! Thank you, JDS!

Instruments of Cyanide Bendy
Trapped within the silence inside, watching as the days go by outside
All this replacing, discarding my face in this hollow tune
The fall of the idol will tear us limb from limb
To where wondering was a sin, to where nightmares can begin
This life did not choose us, it chose to consume us
To ready for the day, we march with dread beneath the sway
Dark nights are upon us, black magic slays on the chorus
For the choir's in tune with an angel
Foresight of the broken, chain us
May her demeanour combine us within sorrow and blindness
We'll follow where the path of freedom can rejoin us now
We bow before a fake, for goodness sake
Where's the pride when we needed it to carry away?
This decay has derailed (Ignite, defy, we cannot testify)
Now she walks, leaving trails of the damned
May the shadows haunt the scenes, kneel down for the queen
Fall into the hands of sorrow, drawn by the darkest bay
Walk into the pit of silence, I am the one calling your name
I, in the name of violence sentence you down to hell
Live or you will die
Just for the sake, fetch me the tools
So I create this instrument of cyanide
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Dark nights have devoured us
I walk this river of conscience for a time where we come to escape here
This lens has an open vengeance
I've laid in here for the longest time, the deadliest choir chimes for my awakening
This reckoning will see the light tonight
We bow before a fake, for goodness sake
Where's the pride when we needed it to carry away?
This decay has derailed (Ignite, defy, we cannot testify)
Now she walks, leaving trails of the damned
May the shadows haunt the scenes, kneel down for the queen
Fall into the hands of sorrow, drawn by the darkest bay
Walk into the pit of silence, I am the one calling your name
I, in the name of violence sentence you down to hell
Live or you will die
Just for the sake, fetch me the tools
So I create this instrument of cyanide
It is time for you to leave, or so it may seem
Empower desire to reignite the flames
For there's one more thing you have of mine, the core to my strings
Empower desire to reignite the flames
So as you ascend to the heavens now
I'll drag you back down to hell, listen to me
Empower desire to reignite the flames
Can't you see your friend is now mine? All mine
I've waited here for the longest time
And when the ashes spread apart
It is then, I'll take out his heart
Fall into the hands of sorrow, drawn by the darkest bay
Walk into the pit of silence, I am the one calling your name
I, in the name of violence sentence you down to hell
Live or you will die
Just for the sake, fetch me the tools
So I create this instrument of cyanide
It is time for you to leave, or so it may seem
Dark nights are upon us, black magic slays on the chorus
Drag you back down the hell, listen to me
I've waited here for the longest time
Your friend is now mine, all mine
Dark nights are upon us