After being founded on November 8th, 2011, inkle, creator of hit narrative titles such as Overboard!, Sorcery! and 80 Days, today turns 10 years old. Since being founded in 2011 inkle has established itself as one of the most prolific and well respected indie development companies in the UK and beyond.

Looking back on the success of inkle over the last 10 years co-founder and Narrative Director at inkle, Jon Ingold told Gaming Sandbox “There’s been a lot of turning points and changes over 10 years.” From acquiring the rights to Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! series to releasing Overboard! there has certainly been no lack of exciting memories for the team. Speaking on the release of Overboard! Ingold noted:

We kept the game a complete secret until the moment of launch, and we didn’t know if we’d sink without a trace. But the support of our community and friends in the game dev world helped to get the message out about the game fast and turned into one of our bigger successes.

 

 

Over the course of inkle‘s 10 years, Ingold remarked on all the “amazing moments” he experienced including:

walking into our first GDC in 2015 to see 80 Days playing on the massive conference screen after its IGF nominations; a somewhat drunken Sorcery! 4 launch party where the IGN UK podcast played that game live; the first time we heard Laurence Chapman’s incredible theme for Heaven’s Vault that made our hair stand on end; welling up in Starbucks when I read Meghna’s first draft of Fogg’s death in 80 Days…

However, he noted that his personal favourite was after the release of Heaven’s Vault, members of inkle‘s public discord server began “communicating with each other in the Ancient language of that game.”

 

 

With inkle‘s already incredibly successful 10 years featuring 16 releases, 5 BAFTA nominations, 2 IGF Awards and 2 scripting languages, the question is now, what next? Whilst we may not have the answer, the developers themselves seem to be in the same position as us with Jon saying:

One thing is we never know what we’re going to do next – we’re small, flexible and driven more by emotion than any long term strategy.

inkle hopes that they can continue to try new things, tell even more amazing stories, and further explore how to bring their games and characters to life.

I hope we’ll be able to carry on trying things, exploring, telling great stories. We love to solve problems, and to bring game characters to life. There are so many genres, styles and worlds we haven’t yet explored. And I really hope that we can nurture some new talent along the way as well.

One thing is for sure, if we’re treated to the same high-quality titles from inkle in the next 10 years as we were in the first 10 then we’re sure in for a treat.

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