Cheap Tattoo

Most tattoo games let you press a button and a tattoo appears. This one hands you the machine. You set the voltage. You pick the needle. You follow the stencil line by line, wipe the blood away, and watch the skin react to every pass. Get it right and the ink sits clean. Get it wrong and you have a customer with a story about that one guy who ruined their arm.

THE MACHINE IS THE GAME
Voltage and needle depth are not decoration. Run too shallow and the ink falls out. Push too deep and you shred the skin, the bleeding starts, and the customer stops being polite. Every body part takes the needle differently — a forearm is not a neck. Liners for outlines, shaders and magnums for filling, bugpins for detail. Each cartridge behaves differently under the skin, and you feel it.

18 INKS, 6 OF THEM NEON
Black liner ink for the outline, colour for the fill, and six neon tones that glow. Dip the cap, watch the level drop as you work, dip again before the line runs dry.

THE PRACTICE SKIN
New needle you have never used? Test it on a piece of practice leather first. The marks fade after a couple of seconds, and nobody gets hurt while you find out how hard it pulls.

FROM A CELL TO YOUR OWN STUDIO
Start on a prison bunk with a machine built out of a toothbrush motor. Work your way out, into your own place, and up to a shop with your name over the door. Better machines mean a steadier hand and voltage that stays where you put it. Or skip all of it: Free Mode unlocks everything, and you can type your own text in five tattoo lettering styles or bring in your own design as a stencil.