INKWAVE 1.1 — Online Multiplayer and HULLBREAKER
· Jayden Davis
INKWAVE 1.1 is live, and it is the largest update the game has had. Online play, a co-op boss fight and a new stage arrive together, on top of a full rework of the squidkids and the lighting on every arena.
Play online with friends
The main menu now has an Online entry. Create a private room and the game gives you a five-character code; send it to your friends and they join with Join a room. A room holds up to eight players, four to a team.
The host picks the stage, the time of day, the match length and whether bots fill the empty slots. Everyone else picks a team, a weapon and a look, then readies up. The lobby shows the whole lineup live, with emotes and ready state for every player. If someone drops mid-match, a bot takes over their squidkid, and if the host leaves, the room moves to the next player without stopping the match. There is no account and no install.
HULLBREAKER: the Boss Battle
Boss Battle is a co-op mode, and it is in public beta. Your whole squad — humans plus bots, up to eight — fights one giant enemy: HULLBREAKER, an armoured hermit crab that has moved into a rusted shipping container.
HULLBREAKER paints the arena with corrupt ink, charges across the pier, lobs barrels and sprays its eye cannon in sweeping arcs. Each attack has a clear telegraph, so the fight is about reading the tell and punishing the opening. The crab has three phases. Its eye stalks are always a weak point; its soft underbelly opens up when it is stunned and in the final phase, when the shell cracks. Weak-point hits deal far more damage than body shots.
A Boss Battle lasts four minutes by default, with three- and five-minute options, and it works offline against bots as well as online. Win by dropping HULLBREAKER’s health to zero before the clock runs out.
Cargo Terminal
Cargo Terminal is a new stage: Berth 4 of a working container terminal, with a ship-to-shore crane straddling a diagonal pier between two moored box ships. It is online only. It needs at least two players, it never fills with bots, and a player who leaves is removed rather than replaced, so teams can be uneven. Read the stage guide for the lanes and the high ground.
A new look for every squidkid
The characters were rebuilt: sculpted heads and eyes with real lids, blinking and gaze, softer tentacle hair, layered outfits and sneakers. Every stage also received a lighting pass at day and at dusk, so the arenas and the ink read more clearly.
There is nothing to install. Open Play, or read How to Play for the online and Boss Battle rules. INKWAVE is an independent project and is not affiliated with Nintendo. The source is on GitHub under the MIT license.
