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The main menu contains the following options.

Items: View, sort, and use items.
Equipment: Equip and unequip weapons, armor, and accessories.
???: Increase party members' stats (name undecided).
Techs and Spells: View the techs and spells each character has learned. For Josiah, it shows the battle and exploration phrases he's learned.
Status: View party member stats.
Party Formation: Swap characters in and out of your active party.
Josiah's Novel: Read Josiah's unfinished novel (updated as the game progresses).
Talina's Log: View Talina's notes on scanned monsters and other information.
Options: Change various game settings.

Designer's Comments (6/28/2010):
Nothing too special here. Most of the sections are pretty basic stuff for RPGs. Other than that... Talina's log was mentioned in her character profile. You can use it to view information on monsters she's scanned and possibly some other things as well (still working out the details). Josiah's Novel lets you read the book Josiah was writing before he got pulled into its world. Throughout the course of the game, the book updates itself based on the events that have taken place. It serves mostly as a very comprehensive plot summary but contains some hints and tips as well. The ??? section is for character development. It's where you go to "level up" your party, though Ink doesn't exactly have levels. It'll be kinda similar to Final Fantasy X's Sphere Grid or XIII's Crystarium, though still fairly different. I'll be explaining it in-depth in a future update. As for the reason it's currently called ???... No big mystery, I'm just having trouble coming up with a good name for it.

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The item menu will allow players to automatically sort items by type or alphabetical order and also contain a manual sorting option. The menu my have entirely separate sections for different types of items (currently undecided). The player can also use healing items directly from the menu.

Designer's Comments (6/30/2010):
Yeah, nothing special here. Just your standard item section in the menu. The one thing I haven't decided yet is whether or not to have separate sections for different times of items. The reason? I haven't finalized the different item types that are going to be in the game yet so I'm not sure if there will be enough to for the extra sections to really be worthwhile.

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The equipment menu will allow players to view and modify equipment on characters. Each character can equip one weapon, one piece of armor, and two accessories. While armor and accessories can be removed entirely, characters must always have a weapon equipped and can therefor can only replace their weapon with another weapon and cannot dequip it.
When a piece of equipment is highlighted, the character's stats will show any changes that would be made by equipping that piece. Stat decreases will be shown in red and increases in green.

Designer's Comments (7/2/2010):
Once again, nothing too unusual about this. If you play RPGs you've doubtless encountered tons of similar equip menus. At the moment, I'm planning to allow one piece of armor and two accessories per character, though there's a slight chance I'll change that later on. Finally, the reason characters must always have a weapon equipped is so the art team won't need to make two complete sets of battle animations (armed and unarmed) for each character. You may have noticed that a lot of other RPGs these days do the same thing.

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The techs and spells menu lets players view all the techs and spells learned by the selected character. When highlighting a particular tech or spell its effect and attack or element combination is displayed. Double and triple techs are also displayed.

Designer's Comments (7/7/2010):
Unsurprisingly, there's nothing special about this menu either. Players naturally need a menu section where they can check which techs and spells players have learned and see their effects and combos. I may eventually add the ability for characters to cast certain spells from this menu as well, though at the moment I'm not sure if it's really necessary.

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The status menu displays an image of the the selected character along with a complete list of their stats and a short character description / bio which will be updated over the course of the game.

Designer's Comments (7/9/2010):
Once again, nothing too out of the ordinary here. Status menus are yet another standard part of the RPG menu system. The only unique thing here is the addition of a character description / bio, which I thought would be appropriate since the status menu is something like Josiah's reference sheets for each character. Not that I actually use character reference sheets when I write, but I've thought about it every time I find myself digging through previous chapters because I can't remember what color someone's eyes are or something like that.

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The party formation menu displays images of all available party members. Their order can be rearranged to change the members and battle formation of the active party.

Designer's Comments:
Yet another rather simple menu. Any RPG which has more party members than slots in the active party needs a way for the player to switch his party around. Of course, sometimes certain characters won't be available for story reasons and Josiah (barring certain rare parts of the story) is always part of the main party. But other than that there's nothing too special here.

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Josiah's novel contains a complete readable version of Josiah's unfinished novel (written in standard novel form). It should be updated periodically throughout the game to cover new story developments and/or changes. At the start of the game, the novel will cover story material that the player hasn't reached yet in game. Once the player catches up to that point, the story will update as it happens. The novel will include a bookmark and chapter skip feature.

Designer's Comments:
Since Ink is all about an unfinished novel, it makes sense for players to actually be able to read the novel instead of having the usual plot summary option in the menu. When the game starts, it will contain everything Josiah has written so far, which will amount to the first several chapters of the novel. However, due to Josiah's presence and the unknown force rewriting his story, much of that changes as the story go on. While the early novel will provide some hints about what comes next and how Josiah originally intended the story to go, the later novel serves as a plot summary and reference. It should also make for a good read on its own. Actually, if Ink were to have a special edition release, or something like that, the complete printed novel would make a good bonus item...

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All enemy information scanned through Talina's All Seeing Eye moment of power can be viewed here. Enemies that have been encountered by the player but not scanned will have abbreviated entries. The log will also include Talina's notes on various important locations and characters. As information will be written in Talina's own voice.

Designer's Comments (8/25/2010):
It's always nice to have a place where the player can review previously scanned enemy information. And since Talina's job was to record all of her observations for her master, it makes perfect sense to store all the information in her log (and fits with the game's writing theme). It also fits her character (and serves a useful game function) to record information on important people and locations in the log. Basically, her log can be thought of as the database that a lot of newer RPGs have. But, since Ink is all about the writer, all the information in the log will look and sound like it was written by Talina, giving it a more personal touch.

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The following options will be available in the menu.

Music Volume: Adjust the volume of the music.
Sound FX and Voice Volume: Adjust the volume of the sounds and voices.
Subtitles: Turn subtitles on or off for spoken dialogue.
Language: Chance the language of the voice overs and/or text.
Controls: Change the button configuration.

Designer's Comments (8/30/2010):
Can't really have a game these days without an options menu. Nothing too special here. The exact options selection may change slightly as the development progresses and it's decided that a particular option is or isn't needed. As a note on the language option, that's an iffy one. Personally I think that if multiple language versions of a game are completed in time, it's nice to include them all on one disc (never know when someone will want to play the game in a different language). But it's not that simple. Translating a game can take a lot of time, especially if you also need to re-record all the voice acting, so there's no guarantee that the other language versions would be done in time for the initial release. Then there's the whole disc space issue. While text (even a lot of it) usually doesn't take a huge amount of space, voice overs do. While the PS3 uses blu-ray discs which could easily hold multiple language tracks for most games (though for some even a single dual layer blu-ray wouldn't be enough). the 360 and Wii use DVDs which have far less storage space to spare. So, while having a multiple language option would be nice, it's not always very practical.