Dev Log #9: INKOCHET — A Free Game Built to Be Seen
I’ve shipped before. I’ve built tools, written engines, and released a commercial title. But I’m still largely unknown outside of a small circle. That’s something I’m consciously trying to change.
INKOCHET is my most public-facing bet yet — and it’s free.
What It Is
INKOCHET: Paint The Walls With Your Arrows is a retro first-person puzzle game with one rule:
Paint every wall in the level before your last arrow goes dark.
You have a bow and a limited supply of arrows. Each one ricochets off walls up to four times, leaving paint on every surface it strikes. You’re not aiming at enemies. You’re aiming at geometry. Your job is to read the space, plan your angles, and make every shot count.
Simple to understand. Brutal to master.
Why This Game
The engine behind it is something I’ve been building for months — talked about in Dev Log #10. At some point I had to ask myself what game was actually worth making with it.
Not another shooter. Something where the raycaster aesthetic — the fog, the shadow geometry, the pseudo-3D feel — is the atmosphere, not just window dressing.
A puzzle game where silence and angles do all the work felt like the honest answer.
Features
Raycaster visuals.
Built on a hand-crafted software renderer. Distance fog, a teal-and-shadow palette, and a moody pixel-art look that sits somewhere between Wolfenstein and something you’d find on a CRT at 2am.
Ricochet arrow physics.
Every shot bounces up to four times. Each level is a different geometry problem. No two angles feel the same.
2-player online co-op.
Arrows are split between you and a partner. You’re not just solving levels — you’re negotiating shots in real time. Coordination matters.
Procedural ambient score.
A drone-based generative soundtrack in C Minor Pentatonic that reacts to the space. Every run sounds a little different. The silence between shots has weight.
CRT scanline mode.
Toggle it on or off. Looks right either way.
It’s free.
No purchase, no friction. I want as many people as possible to find it.
The Honest Goal
INKOCHET is a deliberate attempt to reach people. A free game with a clean, memorable concept, built on a renderer I wrote myself — that’s the pitch. I want someone to play it, tell a friend, and that chain to keep going without me pushing it.
That’s what putting your name on the map looks like when you’re a solo dev with no budget and no team.
If it’s good enough, it’ll travel. So I’m focused on making it good enough.
See you in the next one,
— Stamatios