BENDY: INK AND HORROR – A Retrospective In Anticipation

With the news of a new game from Joey Drew Studios, Bendy: The Cage, it feels like a good time to look over the disturbingly charming indie series that began with Bendy And The Ink Machine, was followed by Boris And The Dark Survival, and then Bendy And The Dark Revival.

In this subversive, meta world, the narrative centres around Joey Drew, a Walt Disney-esque animator/producer who became so obsessed with his cartoon creations, Bendy the Demon and his friends, Boris the Wolf and Alice Angel, he sought supernatural rituals to bring them to literal life. This resulted in the formation of a pocket dimension that each protagonist gets drawn into and corrupted by (with the exception of Boris).

From left to right: Alice Angel, Bendy the Dancing Demon, and Boris the Wolf

Bendy And The Ink Machine, released in 2017, is based in 1963 and Henry Stein is invited back to the studio by Joey Drew. At first he finds it eerily abandoned but is quickly dragged into the alter-dimension of the living cartoons and mutated staff members.

There was a great freshness in the presentation. The Max Fleischer style cartoon aesthetics brought into a three dimensional environment. Where normally a cartoon style would have added levity to the horrific elements, this actually made it more disturbing. There is a good atmospheric build up before you come across any monsters, and although you do get weapons, you are rarely expected use them and more often expected to run and hide in specified closets, in between solving various item-based puzzles.

You cannot hope to kill the Ink Demon, only escape him

The follow up game, Boris And The Dark Survival, released in 2020, was a complete shift in gameplay and perspective. Though they obviously kept the same aesthetics, the game was changed form a linear, first-person dynamic, to a top-down procedurally generated, roguelike.

Playing as the titular Boris the Wolf, you navigate randomly generated levels to find fragments, clues and audio logs (along with a range of collectibles) to fill out further details of the history of Joey Drew and the ink monsters that populate the world of his creations. Along the way you have to help Boris evade the powerful Ink Demon and its entourage of ink boss monsters that were introduced in the first game.

Overall, this game felt like a holdover to keep their audience’s attention while the real sequel was being made. Though there is some crossover with the survival horror and roguelike audiences (as can be seen with the success of games like Darkest Dungeon), this didn’t feel like the rewards were worth the effort. The abundant variety of collectibles to find contrasted heavily against the complete lack of variety in the gameplay loop, there was nothing to acquire, achieve, find or craft that added any sort of variety or potential for strategy from game to game. There is basically one strategy to search and evade, and it just comes down to calculating when to run and when to hide.

After Boris came the proper sequel for Bendy and his crew. In late 2022 Bendy and the Dark Revival was released. This is set ten years after the events of Bendy and the Ink Machine, and Archgate Films has bought the rights to Bendy after Joey Drew’s death. This obviously leads to the rediscovery of the Ink Machine and all that it entails.

Bendy And The Dark Revival follows an animator, Audrey, who is working late when she’s drawn into the cartoon world by a clearly disturbed Wilson Arch. She is subsequently lead along a path of terror and physical corruption as we are shown what Wilson Arch has done to subjugate the pocket dimension in an effort to supress the Ink Demon. Old and new characters are introduced and further collectibles fill out more of the story, both with Joey Drew Studios and Archgate Films.

The supressed version of Bendy is much cuter than his corrupted counterpart

This is a much longer effort and a far richer and more detailed experience than the first game. Though from that expansion a lot of focus seems to have been lost. Now there is only one weapon (the GENT pipe), but there is a whole crafting system for modifying it. You are also given magical ink abilities to factor in a game mechanic for the body horror that Audrey is experiencing. Even though you have enemies you cannot fight no matter what weapons you have (like in the first game), all this added arsenal and busy work dilutes a lot of the horror atmosphere. On top of this there are also a lot more roaming enemies seemingly only to justify the added weapons and features. And although this is still a worthy instalment, it does tend to feel overly busy and distracted from its own story.

That said, the writing is still great, and between this and the books both physical and digital, they have shown to go largely from strength to strength with expanding and elaborating on the world of Bendy. So with the announcement of the next game Bendy: The Cage, there is a lot of proven talent behind it that we can reliably expect good (if not great) things ahead.

Bendy and all his friends are waiting for you.

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