Ink Inc. Tattoo Tycoon Guide: Tips, Cheats & Strategies to Build Your Tattoo Empire

If you think getting a tattoo was scary, imagine having to be the one making it. Since the canvass is another person’s skin, your customers will hate you if you mess up. Ink Inc. is a tattoo tycoon game for Android and iOS devices where you get to ink your customers’ tattoos yourself. Each customer comes in with a photo of the tattoo they want. Your job is to recreate that photo on their skin. Of course, since you will be using a tattoo gun, it won’t be as easy as you may think.

Your device vibrates with the gun, making it more difficult to draw accurately. If that’s not enough, your customers start asking for increasingly complicated designs. You start off with simple smileys and hearts then suddenly you’re drawing animals, flags, messages, and more. If you need help building up your tattoo empire, then be sure to check out our Ink Inc. Tattoo Tycoon guide for some useful tips, cheats and strategies!

1. Use The Right Tool

Since Ink Inc. is essentially a drawing game, it would help a lot if you were using a tablet with a stylus pen. The larger screen makes it easier to draw detailed designs, and the pen makes drawing feel more natural. The initial tattoo requests may be easy to draw with your index finger, but as you progress, you will realize fingers aren’t great for drawing smaller details. Some tattoos will require thin letters, which means you will have a hard time seeing what you’re drawing with your hand in the way.

2. Tap Before Your Start Drawing

A common source of frustration for newbies in this game is that the tattoo gun does not spawn where you tap. If you go straight to drawing, you are going to end up doodling outside of the tattoo guide. Tapping first will make the tattoo gun appear on the screen. Once you see it, you can drag it to where you want to start drawing. Make sure you drag it carefully because you don’t want to accidentally draw a line from where the gun appeared to your starting point.

When you start dragging the gun, you will see a white bar fill up. When it is full, the gun will start drawing. Make sure to let go of the gun right before the white bar fills up to avoid any accidents. You can just pick it up again to reset the white bar.

3. Draw Before The Ink Comes Out

Remember that white bar we were talking about earlier? When you are ready to draw, make sure you start the drawing motion by dragging the gun even before the ink comes out. The problem with waiting until the bar is full before you start moving is that the game will often interpret this as a Fill command instead of a Draw.

When you tap and hold in a single spot for a second, the gun will start creating an expanding circle. This is meant for filling in colors of your tattoo. You will end up with a circle of color if you are late in dragging the gun which would be disastrous if you were starting near the edge.

4. A Few Mistakes Are Fine

If you don’t have a stylus pen, or just don’t feel like using one, it doesn’t mean you won’t be able to enjoy the game. It is actually pretty lenient when it comes accuracy. You would be surprised by the things you can get away with. Just try to come as close as possible to the original drawing.

If you smudged a bit, you could probably still pull off a three-star tattoo without having to reset. Just be mindful of the thickness of the lines, though. For some reason customers are fine with a bunch of extra lines on their tattoo but they won’t accept if you drew a dollar sign with thin lines.

5. Where To Begin

Since the game has a Fill function, the most logical place to start is with the outlines of each color. Don’t worry even if the outline isn’t a circle because the Fill won’t bleed over any space that is fully enclosed by lines. This is a great way to complete tattoos quickly while minimizing mistakes at the same time.

The exception to this is if there are small details inside the shapes. For example, the watermelon tattoo has three seeds. If you cover up the pink area right away, it would be harder to draw in the seeds. Start with the small details before you fill in a shape. Don’t worry because the fill won’t draw over the details.

6. Aim For Three Stars

At the end of each round, you will be given a rating depending on how well you were able to draw the tattoo. The maximum you can get is three stars. There are two reasons why you should always aim for three stars. First, you need to collect stars in order to unlock additional gallery pages for your tattoos. If a page is locked, you will not be able to learn new tattoos. The second reason for trying to get three stars is money. The higher your rating, the more money the customers will give you for your work.

7. Watch Ads For More Rewards

Regardless of your star rating, the game will give you two ad offers whenever you finish a round. The first one is offered after you receive your star rating. You can get three additional stars in exchange for watching a video. That means you can get up to six stars in a single round if you accept the offer.

The second offer is given when you see the amount paid by the customer. You can double that amount by watching another video advertisement. Always accept these offers in order to maximize your resource gain. Keep in mind, though, that you won’t be able to take advantage of these offers if you are offline.

8. Upgrade Your Shop

When you are not working on a customer, you will be in your shop’s lobby. It starts off bare, with just a chair for the next customer to sit on. There will be a button at the top of the screen with a price on it. This is the price of the next upgrade. Whenever you upgrade the shop, new items will be added to the lobby. This includes paintings, shelves, ink displays, and so on.

Since upgrading your shop is the only purpose of money in the game, feel free to upgrade as soon as you can afford to do so. It doesn’t give you any advantage in the game, but it is nice to see the shop transform as you progress.

Running your own tattoo parlor isn’t easy, but with the help of our Ink Inc. guide, you will be raking in profits in no time! If you know other tips or tricks for the game, feel free to let us know in the comments!