Hi everyone — it’s been a while since I last wrote to you all. How have you been? Please feel free to drop in and say hello 👋

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🎮 About the Project

For today’s article, I wanted to talk a bit about my recent experience using Ink and Ink.js for my text-based game The Black Market Protocol.

Wow — what a learning curve it was! 😅 It was both a challenge and a ton of fun. I still have a long way to go to get everything working perfectly, but I managed to implement the basics and feel pretty proud of how far it’s come.

One particular shout-out: Shaped by Rain Studios — their “Learn Ink” video helped me a lot. If you're interested in branching dialogue or narrative design, I highly recommend watching it.

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⚙️ What I Found Challenging

One of the hardest parts for me was figuring out how to get external functions in Ink to talk to my actual code in JavaScript/HTML/CSS. It took some trial and error, but it ended up saving me a lot of time once I got it working.

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🚀 Latest Game Updates

I’ve been busy refining the demo, and here’s what’s new:

• 🧳 Inventory System: Not fully functional yet — more of a proof of concept.
• 🎵 New Sounds & Music: Helping bring more life and atmosphere into the scenes.
• 🗺️ Location Tracker + Background Tracker: Keeps the player oriented and adds to immersion.
• 🖼️ UI Overhaul: Refreshed the layout and choices UI (still missing a few backgrounds, which are coming soon).
• 💾 Save/Load System: Fully working now!
• 🗣️ Character Portraits: Added visual flair for dialogue scenes.

✨ New Characters Added:

• Maria
• Mr. Stolz
• Jax
• A mysterious figure…

If you get the chance to try it, I’d love to hear your thoughts! The game is still a little rough around the edges, but it’s been an amazing journey so far. 💙

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🛑 Taking a Short Break

Unfortunately, I’ll be stepping away from the game for a short while as I shift focus to another project — but the devlog journey will continue. There’s still a lot more I want to explore in this space.

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💬 Let’s Connect

What are you working on? Any cool devlogs or projects you want to share?

Drop a message, say hi, or let’s chat about narrative games, coding headaches, or whatever you’re building.

Thanks for reading — and see you soon!

– Creator X