Creating a masterpiece without any mess, Ink was launched in 2025 and has been a hit since launching. A cozy but competitive game, with a well thought out design and beautiful ink bottles.
The aim of the game is to be the first player to place all of their ink bottles!
Priming the canvas
Firstly, admire the gorgeous little ink bottles, choose your playing colour and split the ink bottle into two piles of 12, the remaining bottle becomes your playing piece on the quill wheel. Place the black ink bottles in an accessible area for all players.
Creating a masterpiece without any mess, Ink was launched in 2025 and has been a hit since launching. A cozy but competitive game, with a well thought out design and beautiful ink bottles.
The aim of the game is to be the first player to place all of their ink bottles!
Priming the canvas
Firstly, admire the gorgeous little ink bottles, choose your playing colour and split the ink bottle into two piles of 12, the remaining bottle becomes your playing piece on the quill wheel. Place the black ink bottles in an accessible area for all players.
In the centre of the playing area place the quill wheel, give each player a random starting tile , indicated by their white back, and a palette card. Place 12 bottles on the palette card (colour pool) and 12 in an area next to the card (joker pool).
Place all the ink tiles (95) in the white INK draw bag, draw at random 6 tiles and place them next to each quill head on the outside of the wheel.
The X and XX tiles are separated into piles, place 3 X tokens per player into the blue X bag, setting aside the XX tiles for later in the game and the remaining X tiles are discarded into the box for another game.
The bonus action window is put to the side of the playing area and choose 4 action cards, two with red and two with blue backs, to fill each space in increasing order.
The creative process
Each turn has up to 4 actions, the first two action must occur each turn, actions 3 & 4 occur if play allows.
1. Pick a tile - Move your lead bottle clockwise around the quill wheel to a space that has a tile you wish to pick, you can move as many spaces as you want and even land back on the same tile should the tile be different from the turn before.
NB: You can choose to pass this action and instead the lead bottle doesn’t move but two bottles from the coloured stock move to the joker pool.
2. Add the tile - Ensuring that one of the coloured squares on the chosen tile matches one on another tile in your playing area, place it so they connect. The tiles are double sided and therefore can be flipped.
3. Adjacent coloured tiles all contribute towards completing objectives, objectives are indicated by white circles with numbers 3-7 within them. Adjacent colours are counted where there are no bottles that interrupt the coloured tiles. If the coloured area matches one of the colours on your pallette card use the bottles on the card to complete the objective, if the colour does not match the card then use bottles from the joker pool.
a. Play as many ink bottles as possible, depending on the placement of tiles with associated numbers you can play one or more bottles.
From the corresponding pool mentioned earlier, play one ink bottle upside down on the objective number you’ve completed. Upside down bottles can never be moved for the rest of the game.
All other white spots in the coloured area are covered with ink bottles the correct way up.
b. Trigger a Bonus Action (optional), but can only carried out immediately and not saved up for another turn.
c. Extend your turn if any other objectives can be completed. Some tile placements allow for two objectives to be completed, or completing a bonus action can also complete an objective. Continue actioning objectives within the same turn.
4. Replenish - As the turn ends tiles are replenished on the quill wheel for the next players turn.
Event Triggers and Outcomes
In addition to completing objectives there are a few other event triggers to add some curveballs to play. One that can really impact completing challenges is when the lead bottle moves past the starting space, the bottle must stop on the X space. Draw an X tile, adding that tile to your painting.
Placing an X or XX tile, each tile covers two coloured squares on your painting. For X tiles, it must cover at least one square of the matching colour. If you do not have that colour on your painting then it can cover any two squares. Once all the X tiles have been drawn from the bag the XX tiles are used to fill the bag.
For XX tile placement they must cover 2 adjacent squares of the same colour from the 2 options on the tile. If you place it on a square with a bottle on it, remove the bottle and return it to the joker pool.
Finishing Touches
The game ends when a player places their last ink bottle,triggering the end of the game. If the player has other white spots to complete in the same objective then they use the black ink bottles to fill the spaces. The game continues until all players have had the same number of turns. The winner is the player to have played all of their ink bottles, if this is more than one player then the player with the most black bottles wins! If it remains tied then a final round with those players takes place until there is a winner.
Accessibility variation
If any player is colour blind, remove all players’ lead bottles and replace them with a disk of their colour.
Reflecting on the Masterpiece
There are many reasons this game is my favourite to play, firstly I love the details of this game, the little ink bottles are such a neat touch to the gameplay. The artwork is relaxing making this a cosy but competitive game, with some nice chilled music it can certainly become a nice end to a day. The subtle game play details such as upturning the bottles to protect them from being removed, the X/XX tiles that can be a surprise in the canvas keep the game play and future planning changeable. I also love that there is a solo mode that doesn’t limit any of the main game play elements.
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