This review contains spoilers
I hate ARG bullshit.
I hate its self-bemused nature.
I hate the exploitative and addictive nature of its "burn its own paper trail" conspiracy-bait nonsense that plays off the mind's desire to see patterns and solve questions.
I hate the sentient game character bullshit and frankly I'm quite tired of it.
I think this is the kind of game whose means are the same as its ends, like a conspiracy that exists to continue itself, rather than to communicate or express something of its own. I think compared to other games I've played that have this kind of conspiratorial atmosphere, Persona 2, Xenogears, and Metal Gear Solid 2 all use the conspiratorial mindset to comment on something really cool, and this one ended up feeling unsatisfying.
There is an argument to be made about it commenting on the nature of players' desire to uncover everything about a game, needlessly prying into a world that isn't theirs to the detriment of that world and themselves, although I think that idea was better explored in Undertale.
There's also the argument that the game is commenting on the strangeness of game development itself, this strange idea that inside your own computer projects that there can exist a single file or data that imparts something of great importance, that can completely change you or even the world. That slaving on it in isolation, answering question after question of your own designs could possibly create something out of nothing, something unbelievable, something so awesome or catastrophic...is it even worth the cost? The reprecussions to ourselves, the people we love?
But I believe this idea was better explored by The Hex, this developer's previous game, and by possibly the best game to address that idea, maybe the best game about games, the internet, and people's desires to reach outward to find themselves in our dreams of information, Hypnospace Outlaw.
The kinds of games this developer makes are equally cringy as they are scary, and somehow that cringeness doubles back and makes it even more scary, in ways you didn't know were possible. The more you look at the things you dismiss for being silly, the scarier they become. Maybe I'm scared at the reasons I'm finding them scary, lol.
I think I'm also just tired of games being about games. Games need to branch out and express other kinds of experiences, industries, worldviews, cultures, lifestyles, etc. I don't want to play games about games no more :(
The card games were pretty fun tho
I hate its self-bemused nature.
I hate the exploitative and addictive nature of its "burn its own paper trail" conspiracy-bait nonsense that plays off the mind's desire to see patterns and solve questions.
I hate the sentient game character bullshit and frankly I'm quite tired of it.
I think this is the kind of game whose means are the same as its ends, like a conspiracy that exists to continue itself, rather than to communicate or express something of its own. I think compared to other games I've played that have this kind of conspiratorial atmosphere, Persona 2, Xenogears, and Metal Gear Solid 2 all use the conspiratorial mindset to comment on something really cool, and this one ended up feeling unsatisfying.
There is an argument to be made about it commenting on the nature of players' desire to uncover everything about a game, needlessly prying into a world that isn't theirs to the detriment of that world and themselves, although I think that idea was better explored in Undertale.
There's also the argument that the game is commenting on the strangeness of game development itself, this strange idea that inside your own computer projects that there can exist a single file or data that imparts something of great importance, that can completely change you or even the world. That slaving on it in isolation, answering question after question of your own designs could possibly create something out of nothing, something unbelievable, something so awesome or catastrophic...is it even worth the cost? The reprecussions to ourselves, the people we love?
But I believe this idea was better explored by The Hex, this developer's previous game, and by possibly the best game to address that idea, maybe the best game about games, the internet, and people's desires to reach outward to find themselves in our dreams of information, Hypnospace Outlaw.
The kinds of games this developer makes are equally cringy as they are scary, and somehow that cringeness doubles back and makes it even more scary, in ways you didn't know were possible. The more you look at the things you dismiss for being silly, the scarier they become. Maybe I'm scared at the reasons I'm finding them scary, lol.
I think I'm also just tired of games being about games. Games need to branch out and express other kinds of experiences, industries, worldviews, cultures, lifestyles, etc. I don't want to play games about games no more :(
The card games were pretty fun tho
The first 2-3 hours of inscryption are wonderful. A creepy, thoroughly atmospheric dive in this weird, creepy card game, played in a small little cabin against some weird guy who pantomines the parts of the bosses and kills you with a camera at the end. There's so many little touches in this part, and coming off the table and solving all the little puzzles of the cabin with an aim to escape/win, its awesome. There's a great occult, macabre vibe to it all, and then it all comes together for a neat resolution as you and your talking cards hatch a plan.
Its sad for me to say that whilst it would have been dissapointing in it's own right, the game would have been better stopping right there. It would have left me wanting way, way more and the game would come out at about an hour and a half long, but that's a better world than the one we live in.
Because Inscryption really just could not help itself from going down the creepypasta meta rabbit hole for the latter two thirds of it's runtime. It's not as bad as the dev's previous game Pony Island and is presented pretty well, but is ultimately just way less endearing and interesting than the first act.
Sadly the game also gets less mechanically interesting. Part of this is definetly a psychological element - i'm less interested in getting into the minutae of the mechanics when its obvious the game's now committed to throwing the baby out with the bathwater every 20 minutes, but I also think there's an elegance to the creature sacrifice emphasis of the first act that nothing that comes after comes close to matching.
I understand there is meant to be a point to this, at least somewhat, as the soulful roleplay-driven gameplay gives way to more mechanically deep or whatever gameplay, but I do think it just falls flat and the non-card gameplay of the latter sections are particularly weak in comparison.
And the story? It's thankfully told with fantastic production values and editing and is pretty well paced, and pulls those good old 4th wall meta game tricks which honestly im a bit tired of by now even if they're very cute in this one. But it's just really not interesting and there's not really much more to it than Sonic.exe at the end of the day. It's well told and the presentation is outright incredible throughout, but on a personal level it's really just where I wish the story didn't go after such an incredible opening.
It also really drags near the end. The final section prior to the ending is way too fucking long and not much even happens in the story. If it didn't so blatantly feel like a "final act" I probably would have dropped it about halfway through.
So yeah, if I stopped playing the game after 2 hours the score here would probably be a 4.5/5, maybe even a 5 if i was feeling particularly generous. And it's not like the rest of the game is offensively bad or anything, it's just profoundly dissapointing, especially in the light of what's clearly a mountain of effort and attention to detail that's gone into it that feels in service of completely the wrong way for the game to go.
Inscryption truly took me down the rabbit hole. I wish it didn't bother.
Its sad for me to say that whilst it would have been dissapointing in it's own right, the game would have been better stopping right there. It would have left me wanting way, way more and the game would come out at about an hour and a half long, but that's a better world than the one we live in.
Because Inscryption really just could not help itself from going down the creepypasta meta rabbit hole for the latter two thirds of it's runtime. It's not as bad as the dev's previous game Pony Island and is presented pretty well, but is ultimately just way less endearing and interesting than the first act.
Sadly the game also gets less mechanically interesting. Part of this is definetly a psychological element - i'm less interested in getting into the minutae of the mechanics when its obvious the game's now committed to throwing the baby out with the bathwater every 20 minutes, but I also think there's an elegance to the creature sacrifice emphasis of the first act that nothing that comes after comes close to matching.
I understand there is meant to be a point to this, at least somewhat, as the soulful roleplay-driven gameplay gives way to more mechanically deep or whatever gameplay, but I do think it just falls flat and the non-card gameplay of the latter sections are particularly weak in comparison.
And the story? It's thankfully told with fantastic production values and editing and is pretty well paced, and pulls those good old 4th wall meta game tricks which honestly im a bit tired of by now even if they're very cute in this one. But it's just really not interesting and there's not really much more to it than Sonic.exe at the end of the day. It's well told and the presentation is outright incredible throughout, but on a personal level it's really just where I wish the story didn't go after such an incredible opening.
It also really drags near the end. The final section prior to the ending is way too fucking long and not much even happens in the story. If it didn't so blatantly feel like a "final act" I probably would have dropped it about halfway through.
So yeah, if I stopped playing the game after 2 hours the score here would probably be a 4.5/5, maybe even a 5 if i was feeling particularly generous. And it's not like the rest of the game is offensively bad or anything, it's just profoundly dissapointing, especially in the light of what's clearly a mountain of effort and attention to detail that's gone into it that feels in service of completely the wrong way for the game to go.
Inscryption truly took me down the rabbit hole. I wish it didn't bother.
So effective as a horror game it tricked me into playing a roguelite deckbuilder.
initially I thought this was going to be some boring card game but I was so wrong. This game is one of the most addicting roguelikes I have ever played. I love the art style, visuals and aesthetic of the game. I really like the feature where you have a chance to make your own cards because you can make them super op. Ultimately, this game made me appreciate card games and it's super fun, that's why it's 5 stars.
Captive in a dark cabin;
No death, no chance to escape
Until I turned the tables
On my sadistic captor I learned to hate.
Yet, that world crumbled away,
And I began to see truth.
Passion for playing the game -
T'was showmanship all along, and not abuse.
Surprised by how much I grew
to love this game, front to end,
narrative truly grabbed me,
as once loathed opponents transformed into friends.
No death, no chance to escape
Until I turned the tables
On my sadistic captor I learned to hate.
Yet, that world crumbled away,
And I began to see truth.
Passion for playing the game -
T'was showmanship all along, and not abuse.
Surprised by how much I grew
to love this game, front to end,
narrative truly grabbed me,
as once loathed opponents transformed into friends.
Inscryption as modern mythmaking: Plurality/Tulpadom + the competing 'spirits' of card games + Mullin building off the pulp of lost footage creepypasta literature = modern mythchurning
Previously I spoke about Daniel Mullin's game The Hex in which I said that "Meta commentary can not be an excuse for weak game design or a mask for decent criticism. The fact that the game so openly jabs at those sort of metagames makes me rethink my perception on how to approach this fact and whether I was 'tricked' into liking some of those games more than I actually do. " But if The Hex floundered in its main goal, Inscryption thrives in storytelling and satire.
Inscryption is a complicated game to try and explain and summarize, you play as an at first unnamed protagonist trying to escape the cabin of a dungeon master named 'Leshy'. Inscryption is a deck building game, and beyond any other set of mechanical complexities, this primary concept of building up an army of cards which you have to choose how to sacrifice and what to do is one of the main effective things that retain throughout the whole game. To whatever extent you may have issues with playing card games, this game may provide difficulty for you, there are exploits you can utilize to make that part of the adventure less difficult, but theres a lot more contemplation around it than I believe a lot of people are patient for. Ultimately the game simplifies this, its not even remotely complex combat as magic the gathering, . But I've been met with resistance on these grounds regardless and I do sympathize.
There is also the ability to leave the table and walk around in many sections of the game, allowing you to mess around with some simplistic yet effective 'escape the room' style adventure
Of course anybody who has an even passing awareness of the game knows it opens up WAY more than that and provides a focused but far wider experience. There are a lot of moving parts that make Inscryption so brilliant, but one of the primary ones is how immaculate and unique the plot structure is in comparison to many other games. Simply put this game juggles quite a lot more threads of conflict and mystery than it lets on, there is
1. The 'escape the room/game' plot, 1st positioned on a microscale via medias res in relationship to what it shows later
2. The 'lucky carder' interjection mystery, as he unravels the history of the game and the operators trying to control the game
3. The vies for power by each of the 4 Spirits of the game, how their gameplay reflects the perspectives they have on how the game should be played itself
When I lay it out like that, it doesn't seem like an exceptional thing to juggle, but all these are told as a mystery story. Using each of these disparate pieces to make you question what is going on as the game continues to show more of itself. What's important to reflect on by comparison is that this is not just an interesting mystery in terms of games but the literary genre of the 'creepypasta' lost footage scare genre its building itself off of. So allow me to pontificate for a moment, lets compare them to both. We can see on the one hand the intricate detail of the mystery elements by comparing it to other games.
Complexity in relationship to mystery games:
I'm not going to pretend there are not some games out there with more complex mystery plots. For example The Silver Case and Killer 7 from my understanding would rightly debunk that right away. But let compare this mystery to the average acclaimed mystery game of merit, I hope these examples are not too controversial as comparison points
Disco Elysium, the Amnesia Plot about the history of your character and their relationship to the world. And the murder mystery plot. Disco uses the Amnesia plot to tell most of the emotional story and uses a murder mystery as an introductory backdrop to the world. A great game, but it has 2 overarching plots of conflict introduced right immediately after each other.
Ace Attorney, in ace attorney you have several subplots but they are episodic. Each one echoing and building off the one before but not directly tying them all in. They are introduced right after each other. Theres a 2nd plot conflict of your lawyer identity but its usually used as bookends for each chapter, only really paying off towards the end.
Meanwhile the fact is in this game it interweaves each plot into the next, hinting as it goes, utilizing the imprisonment narrative as the starting point for you to agree with your character and work towards figuring out whats going on. You and Lucky Carder share important character context by doing this. In these two other games, a mystery is a driving force for player engagement with the world.
The funny thing about this is plot thread juggling is it's probably better in games than in books because you have so much specific interface with everything so you can remember it better, but all you have to do is look at the botched story of Pony Island to see how ultimately hard it can be to get right. Without getting too bogged down here, Pony Island has a similar imprisonment narrative and aspirations towards narrative juggling, but only provides hints at the 'hell' and your character context through cryptic side explanations, making you have to go out of your way and play the game at least 3 times over to get a functional understanding of who your character is and why you are all trapped in Pony Hell. The issue with this is it actually detracts from the ending of the game proper, yes you escaped but the stakes of who you are is never revealed so it renders that stories ending about as cathartic as drinking flat soda. Both are imprisonment mysteries, but one is able to juggle and confront the player with its mystery better by actually centering the more 'disparate' pieces and giving them adequate narrative attention. The best way this is done is by completely splitting conscious attention, everything you pick up from Pony Island is information narrated directly and linearly through the roller coaster whereas Inscryption is happy to break narrative linear explanation, for example the Lucky Carder narrative is given through videos as intermission between each of the acts of the game. What this means is you'll ultimately never know what to expect throughout your adventure in the game which makes its narrative much smoother and more satisfying in terms of building towards climax and 'resolution'. I should be clear, its well designed, but it still follows a fairly well understood narrative buildup on this level.
The multiple entangled plot threads allows for a much wider discussion of interpretation about the events of the game thematically, you can see specifically draw from issues brought up in plot in relationship to how it may or not be commenting on the other two. By doing this it can build much larger contemplations beyond just being about 'identity'.
The other bit we should talk about is the video game creepypasta genre. There's a particular difficulty in talking about this because the subset of examples I have are frankly all a bit experimental and vary wildly in length & public perception. In fact part of the issue here is there's no central body of work I can point to. In a lot of ways it also operates as a sort of 'anti genre' because as genres have mostly been built around their consumer markets.
Take the 'Weird Fiction' genre for example, back when art like the King in Yellow and Lovecraft's fiction came out, there wasn't even a genre name pronounced and recirculated. It was only after Lovecraft's spontaneous rise in popularity a few decades after he was dead an obscure literary genre was connected, even then people think Lovecraft is to thank for all of it anyway and refer to games like 'Cultist Simulator' as 'Lovecraftian'. I'm not trying to call people out for literary ignorance here, my point here is that markets play a rather prominent role around this stuff. Because of the fact that most of the art produced is engaging in blank point copyright violation.
Here's a few examples anyway: The Terrible Story of Animal Crossing, by Chewbot is posted over on the LP Archives. Available to read. The story treats the protagonist as a living entity and uses the vehicle of horror to parody most of the unspoken regulations and artificialities of animal crossing. The protagonist jumps from figuring out how to escape throughout the text, in the process unveiling a sinister plot.
Sonic.exe is a fairly popular but somewhat sloppy short story, about a young passionate teenager who finds out a glitched anomaly copy of the game from their friend Kyle. Despite the warning to 'destroy the game' the protagonist boots the game out of morbid curiosity only for it to haunt him and for him to disappear mysteriously at the end. There is a game made inspired by this one, and a sequel.
Recently Crow 64 came out which is a swanky Youtuber review over an obscure game about an abandoned Demo that slowly eats up the narrator throughout the video. Using a strange backstory of its production along with the developer isolating and then dumping himself into the river.
There's a few identifiable features these examples have in common, thematic points of entrapment by games, mysterious unwanted gifts/discoveries, corruption, and horror through 'pandoras box' ownership of something (my assumption is that both fairly crass horror films like The Ring, and the genre of Weird Fiction mentioned earlier probably have an important influence on this genre). As a result I don't think the narratological hook surrounding Leshy's use of campfire is an accident here. The complexity of the story being a more involved mystery makes the work exceptional in comparison to these much quicker one shots that have a specific referentiality. The game absolutely revels in trying to show the complexity and fictional potentiality of these tropes.
What I'm trying to get at is that what this game excels at is a rather well constructed narrative form and how it was effectively transposed over to the realm of video games quite effectively. In this way, the game has effectively become a form of myth churning as well. It also puts the author, Mullins, in a unique spot where he can continue to capitalize and perpetuate this budding genre of Videogame Creepypasta. In the process justifying all of the affection and care put into the genre up to this point. Using specific gameplay elements to reinforce the narratological context and make you want to see it out. On the other hand its striking character roster is great for satirizing card games showing the different ways in which design functions flounder to make a cohesive experience. Showing how needless accumulation and repression of others can make a great idea for a card game less than the sum of its parts.
What's funny and also ultimately a bit tragic is that this game means quite a lot to me besides its plot structured satisfaction. Backloggd allows you to post more than 1 write up on a game but its unlikely readers who are primarily reading to find out if a game is 'worth playing' will come back for seconds. Meaning you ultimately have to either say everything about the game all at once: the longer it gets the less patience people have to read as a result. Or you have to suffer the potential that literally nobody will read your 'multiple attached essays'. Let's be honest, this website was not actually constructed with this intention in mind, hell its hardly constructed with long essays in mind in general. Originally I was going to wait to release this essay along with some speaker disembodied from me but that plan fell through. So all you really get instead is a petty complaint instead. I think it's worth mentioning here then that I am plural and that this reflects deeply into the game. I have separate speakers and thinkers that act separately from me that the plural community calls 'alters' each with their own conscious preferences. Sometimes I will get in conflict with them or fight to be the 'main performer' for an external audience. In this case I'm the writer equivalent of Leshy keeping the other versions of my consciousness muted and repressed from their convictions. At the same time I know in the back of my mind that not all of what they have to say is bad, and that there is some legitimacy in letting an established audience be introduced to new thinkers, but its a risk, and just as the corporate and financial game design neurosis will influence certain games which often conflict which each other fundamentally, so to do different conscious speakers in one person to try and figure out if somebody is even interested in an alter's attention. I feel like this game created both a great meditation on cards and also an excellent allegory on plural self repression and anxiety and that's why I have a personal attachment to it as well. The mythmaking for the multiple, what a wonderful idea!
Previously I spoke about Daniel Mullin's game The Hex in which I said that "Meta commentary can not be an excuse for weak game design or a mask for decent criticism. The fact that the game so openly jabs at those sort of metagames makes me rethink my perception on how to approach this fact and whether I was 'tricked' into liking some of those games more than I actually do. " But if The Hex floundered in its main goal, Inscryption thrives in storytelling and satire.
Inscryption is a complicated game to try and explain and summarize, you play as an at first unnamed protagonist trying to escape the cabin of a dungeon master named 'Leshy'. Inscryption is a deck building game, and beyond any other set of mechanical complexities, this primary concept of building up an army of cards which you have to choose how to sacrifice and what to do is one of the main effective things that retain throughout the whole game. To whatever extent you may have issues with playing card games, this game may provide difficulty for you, there are exploits you can utilize to make that part of the adventure less difficult, but theres a lot more contemplation around it than I believe a lot of people are patient for. Ultimately the game simplifies this, its not even remotely complex combat as magic the gathering, . But I've been met with resistance on these grounds regardless and I do sympathize.
There is also the ability to leave the table and walk around in many sections of the game, allowing you to mess around with some simplistic yet effective 'escape the room' style adventure
Of course anybody who has an even passing awareness of the game knows it opens up WAY more than that and provides a focused but far wider experience. There are a lot of moving parts that make Inscryption so brilliant, but one of the primary ones is how immaculate and unique the plot structure is in comparison to many other games. Simply put this game juggles quite a lot more threads of conflict and mystery than it lets on, there is
1. The 'escape the room/game' plot, 1st positioned on a microscale via medias res in relationship to what it shows later
2. The 'lucky carder' interjection mystery, as he unravels the history of the game and the operators trying to control the game
3. The vies for power by each of the 4 Spirits of the game, how their gameplay reflects the perspectives they have on how the game should be played itself
When I lay it out like that, it doesn't seem like an exceptional thing to juggle, but all these are told as a mystery story. Using each of these disparate pieces to make you question what is going on as the game continues to show more of itself. What's important to reflect on by comparison is that this is not just an interesting mystery in terms of games but the literary genre of the 'creepypasta' lost footage scare genre its building itself off of. So allow me to pontificate for a moment, lets compare them to both. We can see on the one hand the intricate detail of the mystery elements by comparing it to other games.
Complexity in relationship to mystery games:
I'm not going to pretend there are not some games out there with more complex mystery plots. For example The Silver Case and Killer 7 from my understanding would rightly debunk that right away. But let compare this mystery to the average acclaimed mystery game of merit, I hope these examples are not too controversial as comparison points
Disco Elysium, the Amnesia Plot about the history of your character and their relationship to the world. And the murder mystery plot. Disco uses the Amnesia plot to tell most of the emotional story and uses a murder mystery as an introductory backdrop to the world. A great game, but it has 2 overarching plots of conflict introduced right immediately after each other.
Ace Attorney, in ace attorney you have several subplots but they are episodic. Each one echoing and building off the one before but not directly tying them all in. They are introduced right after each other. Theres a 2nd plot conflict of your lawyer identity but its usually used as bookends for each chapter, only really paying off towards the end.
Meanwhile the fact is in this game it interweaves each plot into the next, hinting as it goes, utilizing the imprisonment narrative as the starting point for you to agree with your character and work towards figuring out whats going on. You and Lucky Carder share important character context by doing this. In these two other games, a mystery is a driving force for player engagement with the world.
The funny thing about this is plot thread juggling is it's probably better in games than in books because you have so much specific interface with everything so you can remember it better, but all you have to do is look at the botched story of Pony Island to see how ultimately hard it can be to get right. Without getting too bogged down here, Pony Island has a similar imprisonment narrative and aspirations towards narrative juggling, but only provides hints at the 'hell' and your character context through cryptic side explanations, making you have to go out of your way and play the game at least 3 times over to get a functional understanding of who your character is and why you are all trapped in Pony Hell. The issue with this is it actually detracts from the ending of the game proper, yes you escaped but the stakes of who you are is never revealed so it renders that stories ending about as cathartic as drinking flat soda. Both are imprisonment mysteries, but one is able to juggle and confront the player with its mystery better by actually centering the more 'disparate' pieces and giving them adequate narrative attention. The best way this is done is by completely splitting conscious attention, everything you pick up from Pony Island is information narrated directly and linearly through the roller coaster whereas Inscryption is happy to break narrative linear explanation, for example the Lucky Carder narrative is given through videos as intermission between each of the acts of the game. What this means is you'll ultimately never know what to expect throughout your adventure in the game which makes its narrative much smoother and more satisfying in terms of building towards climax and 'resolution'. I should be clear, its well designed, but it still follows a fairly well understood narrative buildup on this level.
The multiple entangled plot threads allows for a much wider discussion of interpretation about the events of the game thematically, you can see specifically draw from issues brought up in plot in relationship to how it may or not be commenting on the other two. By doing this it can build much larger contemplations beyond just being about 'identity'.
The other bit we should talk about is the video game creepypasta genre. There's a particular difficulty in talking about this because the subset of examples I have are frankly all a bit experimental and vary wildly in length & public perception. In fact part of the issue here is there's no central body of work I can point to. In a lot of ways it also operates as a sort of 'anti genre' because as genres have mostly been built around their consumer markets.
Take the 'Weird Fiction' genre for example, back when art like the King in Yellow and Lovecraft's fiction came out, there wasn't even a genre name pronounced and recirculated. It was only after Lovecraft's spontaneous rise in popularity a few decades after he was dead an obscure literary genre was connected, even then people think Lovecraft is to thank for all of it anyway and refer to games like 'Cultist Simulator' as 'Lovecraftian'. I'm not trying to call people out for literary ignorance here, my point here is that markets play a rather prominent role around this stuff. Because of the fact that most of the art produced is engaging in blank point copyright violation.
Here's a few examples anyway: The Terrible Story of Animal Crossing, by Chewbot is posted over on the LP Archives. Available to read. The story treats the protagonist as a living entity and uses the vehicle of horror to parody most of the unspoken regulations and artificialities of animal crossing. The protagonist jumps from figuring out how to escape throughout the text, in the process unveiling a sinister plot.
Sonic.exe is a fairly popular but somewhat sloppy short story, about a young passionate teenager who finds out a glitched anomaly copy of the game from their friend Kyle. Despite the warning to 'destroy the game' the protagonist boots the game out of morbid curiosity only for it to haunt him and for him to disappear mysteriously at the end. There is a game made inspired by this one, and a sequel.
Recently Crow 64 came out which is a swanky Youtuber review over an obscure game about an abandoned Demo that slowly eats up the narrator throughout the video. Using a strange backstory of its production along with the developer isolating and then dumping himself into the river.
There's a few identifiable features these examples have in common, thematic points of entrapment by games, mysterious unwanted gifts/discoveries, corruption, and horror through 'pandoras box' ownership of something (my assumption is that both fairly crass horror films like The Ring, and the genre of Weird Fiction mentioned earlier probably have an important influence on this genre). As a result I don't think the narratological hook surrounding Leshy's use of campfire is an accident here. The complexity of the story being a more involved mystery makes the work exceptional in comparison to these much quicker one shots that have a specific referentiality. The game absolutely revels in trying to show the complexity and fictional potentiality of these tropes.
What I'm trying to get at is that what this game excels at is a rather well constructed narrative form and how it was effectively transposed over to the realm of video games quite effectively. In this way, the game has effectively become a form of myth churning as well. It also puts the author, Mullins, in a unique spot where he can continue to capitalize and perpetuate this budding genre of Videogame Creepypasta. In the process justifying all of the affection and care put into the genre up to this point. Using specific gameplay elements to reinforce the narratological context and make you want to see it out. On the other hand its striking character roster is great for satirizing card games showing the different ways in which design functions flounder to make a cohesive experience. Showing how needless accumulation and repression of others can make a great idea for a card game less than the sum of its parts.
What's funny and also ultimately a bit tragic is that this game means quite a lot to me besides its plot structured satisfaction. Backloggd allows you to post more than 1 write up on a game but its unlikely readers who are primarily reading to find out if a game is 'worth playing' will come back for seconds. Meaning you ultimately have to either say everything about the game all at once: the longer it gets the less patience people have to read as a result. Or you have to suffer the potential that literally nobody will read your 'multiple attached essays'. Let's be honest, this website was not actually constructed with this intention in mind, hell its hardly constructed with long essays in mind in general. Originally I was going to wait to release this essay along with some speaker disembodied from me but that plan fell through. So all you really get instead is a petty complaint instead. I think it's worth mentioning here then that I am plural and that this reflects deeply into the game. I have separate speakers and thinkers that act separately from me that the plural community calls 'alters' each with their own conscious preferences. Sometimes I will get in conflict with them or fight to be the 'main performer' for an external audience. In this case I'm the writer equivalent of Leshy keeping the other versions of my consciousness muted and repressed from their convictions. At the same time I know in the back of my mind that not all of what they have to say is bad, and that there is some legitimacy in letting an established audience be introduced to new thinkers, but its a risk, and just as the corporate and financial game design neurosis will influence certain games which often conflict which each other fundamentally, so to do different conscious speakers in one person to try and figure out if somebody is even interested in an alter's attention. I feel like this game created both a great meditation on cards and also an excellent allegory on plural self repression and anxiety and that's why I have a personal attachment to it as well. The mythmaking for the multiple, what a wonderful idea!
Doki Doki Literature Club for people who like The Lighthouse
color me surprised that an ultra-twisty-indie-roguelike -- a description that makes my eyes roll like no other -- has rapidly become one of my favorite games
while the creepypasta-esque narrative does call for some suspension of disbelief, it works in tandem with the gameplay so flawlessly, and the mysteries beneath it all are captivating enough that you'll likely find yourself caring more about the story by virtue of how much fun everything surrounding it is
don't sleep on this one. even if you hate the narrative concept everything else about inscryption more than justifies the $20 price
while the creepypasta-esque narrative does call for some suspension of disbelief, it works in tandem with the gameplay so flawlessly, and the mysteries beneath it all are captivating enough that you'll likely find yourself caring more about the story by virtue of how much fun everything surrounding it is
don't sleep on this one. even if you hate the narrative concept everything else about inscryption more than justifies the $20 price
This game is Cool and Has Some Vibes and I Like it but I'm not utterly bowled over by it the way just about everyone else seems to be. One thing in particular that I like about this game is how much it wants you to succeed. It wants you to win and it wants you to make progress so that you can uncover the story. Over time, it gives you cards that are more powerful to the point that some are clearly overpowered and can carry you through a run to a win and it's nice to have one of these deckbuilder roguelike-y games feel like it doesn't just want you to understand the mechanics and internalize how they work but it is actively cheering for you, even though the NPCs you talk to and the aesthetics of the game and everything else is in that traditional sort of "well you died. try again, fuck-o" sort of attitude. And I think that that is part of why I feel that this game is more successful in it "meta" aspect than the developer's previous games.
What if Yugioh except it's the Blair Witch Project? And I don't just mean Yugioh the card game but Yugioh the ridiculous anime that wrings a high stakes plot out of that card game.
Inscryption is able to fully embrace being a single-player experience, with asymmetrical rules, opponents that just make up new ones on the fly and a meta-game of outsmarting the enemy both on and off the board. To win you ultimately have to decide how you're going to utterly break the game to beat the odds stacked against you.
As everyone else points out, the biggest sin is that the earliest part is easily the best. It's not the card gameplay, which I found highly addictive throughout and gets nicely injected with new mechanics as it goes on, but an expanding narrative context that causes a loss in momentum. Besides some cool fourth wall breaks (should have guessed this was the Pony Island dev) there's little to keep one hooked narratively, with radically diminishing stakes and a meta story that switches gears from fresh and genuinely unnerving to really silly and riddled with cliches. On the other hand they whip out a literal duel disk at the last second, so I can't hate.
It's still excellent and delivers on what I've wanted from digital card games forever, really the only problem is that the first third ignites far more narrative intrigue than the late game is capable of delivering on.
Inscryption is able to fully embrace being a single-player experience, with asymmetrical rules, opponents that just make up new ones on the fly and a meta-game of outsmarting the enemy both on and off the board. To win you ultimately have to decide how you're going to utterly break the game to beat the odds stacked against you.
As everyone else points out, the biggest sin is that the earliest part is easily the best. It's not the card gameplay, which I found highly addictive throughout and gets nicely injected with new mechanics as it goes on, but an expanding narrative context that causes a loss in momentum. Besides some cool fourth wall breaks (should have guessed this was the Pony Island dev) there's little to keep one hooked narratively, with radically diminishing stakes and a meta story that switches gears from fresh and genuinely unnerving to really silly and riddled with cliches. On the other hand they whip out a literal duel disk at the last second, so I can't hate.
It's still excellent and delivers on what I've wanted from digital card games forever, really the only problem is that the first third ignites far more narrative intrigue than the late game is capable of delivering on.
Incredibly unsuspecting, shifts and morphs, reveals mind-blowing revelations and the layers are akin to peeling back an onion piece by piece at times. Go in blind, you won't regret it.
Early on in my playthrough of Inscryption I made a fatal rookie mistake: Leshy, the deranged and creepy card-opponent-slash-dungeon-master filled his side of the board with birds, and in a moment of panic I sacrificed my Mantis God (which was actually the perfect card in this situation because of its multi-hitting attack) in order to cast a Grizzly (which was a higher-cost card with better stats but ill-suited to dealing with a Zerg Rush-style assault). This one learning experience actually sums up my experience with the entire game, but perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.
The opening of Inscryption - a roguelike/deckbuilder/escape room game - is about as compelling as any game can possibly get. The vibes are immaculate, flavor and mechanics both score a windmill dunk out of ten, and there is enough randomness in map layouts and events that every run feels different and forces you to think on the fly, but not so much that progression feels gated behind pure dumb luck. If there were one nitpick I could have with it, it's that some mechanics and puzzles are too obtuse for my liking - I get that it goes well the game's mysterious vibe, but there's a bit of a clash between its deliberately cryptic elements and the fact that it's a roguelike that relies of optimal decision making and autosaves all your decisions. Still, nearly everything about it is chef's kiss.
Keeping this as light on spoilers as possible, the game then undergoes a few changes, and to put it kindly... the back half (or even longer, depending on your playstyle) becomes the world's longest instance of "the priest fainted. and then everybody clapped!" I was about to say the game design was confused, but that's not quite right. The writers and designers made exactly the game they wanted to! But while it's admirable how much balls they showed by sticking to their original vision, I also find it painful that they had to sacrifice such a strong opening act in order to build their 'meta creepypasta' narrative, and even sacrificed a proper gameplay climax in favor of a denouement that only serves to tease the player on what could have been. The combination of such a strong opening with such wasted potential (keeping in mind that the wasted potential was a deliberate artistic decision!) is what makes Inscryption possibly one of the hardest games for me to put a star rating on.
But perhaps I should conclude by explaining the anecdote at the start of the review. As I told you
The opening of Inscryption - a roguelike/deckbuilder/escape room game - is about as compelling as any game can possibly get. The vibes are immaculate, flavor and mechanics both score a windmill dunk out of ten, and there is enough randomness in map layouts and events that every run feels different and forces you to think on the fly, but not so much that progression feels gated behind pure dumb luck. If there were one nitpick I could have with it, it's that some mechanics and puzzles are too obtuse for my liking - I get that it goes well the game's mysterious vibe, but there's a bit of a clash between its deliberately cryptic elements and the fact that it's a roguelike that relies of optimal decision making and autosaves all your decisions. Still, nearly everything about it is chef's kiss.
Keeping this as light on spoilers as possible, the game then undergoes a few changes, and to put it kindly... the back half (or even longer, depending on your playstyle) becomes the world's longest instance of "the priest fainted. and then everybody clapped!" I was about to say the game design was confused, but that's not quite right. The writers and designers made exactly the game they wanted to! But while it's admirable how much balls they showed by sticking to their original vision, I also find it painful that they had to sacrifice such a strong opening act in order to build their 'meta creepypasta' narrative, and even sacrificed a proper gameplay climax in favor of a denouement that only serves to tease the player on what could have been. The combination of such a strong opening with such wasted potential (keeping in mind that the wasted potential was a deliberate artistic decision!) is what makes Inscryption possibly one of the hardest games for me to put a star rating on.
But perhaps I should conclude by explaining the anecdote at the start of the review. As I told you
I've been chasing an indie game high for a while now, and Inscryption is one of those games that completely validates that whole endeavor. A narrative-driven deck building card game drenched in a horror aesthetic. A love letter to trading card games and tabletop RPGs. Incredible. Haven't stopped thinking about it since I picked it up.
Take the ouroboros.
* Played flawlessly on Linux via Proton 6.3-7
Take the ouroboros.
* Played flawlessly on Linux via Proton 6.3-7
Inscryption's mechanics present one of the best Slay the Spire-alikes I've ever played and they aren't even the point of the game. It's almost unfair.
I came into this game blind, knowing absolutely nothing about it and I'm blown away. I'm not the biggest fan of roguelikes, but a deckbuilding game felt like the perfect mix.
This game was so addicting and I could not put it down. I found the first act of this game amazing and it really pulled me in but the later acts definitely weren't as strong or compelling as the first. That's not to say they were necessarily bad, they just pale in comparison to how great the initial gameplay loop was.
It's hard to talk about this game without diving into spoiler territory, but my expectations were consistently being broken and the amount of twists and turns this game took me through was INSANE. Everyone should experience this game like me, knowing absolutely NOTHING. Play this game.
This game was so addicting and I could not put it down. I found the first act of this game amazing and it really pulled me in but the later acts definitely weren't as strong or compelling as the first. That's not to say they were necessarily bad, they just pale in comparison to how great the initial gameplay loop was.
It's hard to talk about this game without diving into spoiler territory, but my expectations were consistently being broken and the amount of twists and turns this game took me through was INSANE. Everyone should experience this game like me, knowing absolutely NOTHING. Play this game.
The opening few hours of Inscryption are legitimately fantastic. I always liked a lot of what was going on in Slay the Spire but that game is dragged down so much by its incredibly bland aesthetic that just makes me think back to playing Flash games on Newgrounds as a teenager. Inscryption takes that deckbuilder core, adds a really cool, evocative spin on it with the sacrifice mechanic, but most importantly nestles this within a deeply unsettling, intense aesthetic that really sells the whole experience on its own. There are a couple moments that didn't land perfectly for me in these opening few hours, but overall I was very excited to see where the game would head.
I'm not going to spoil any actual story content from this point, but I will be talking about mid and late-game gameplay mechanics changes. I think there are people who will be suitably put off from the whole experience once they know the direction these mechanical changes head in and may value getting to read about these ahead of time, but if knowing anything about the direction the game's mechanics head in is going to upset you then stop reading now.
At the end of these first few hours of the game Inscryption's gameplay becomes markedly worse. It turns into a trading card game, as opposed to the first section's deck-builder nature, a genre that is just a lot harder to make actually work. A part of the problem is that the sheer elegance of the game's original mechanics is hurled to the wayside as it becomes bogged down under the weight of a bunch of new mechanics, whilst constantly tuning and retuning your deck from a vast pool of cards makes for an unbelievably worse gameplay loop than what came beforehand. Arguably an even bigger part of the problem is that the aesthetic is just so much less compelling in this second part too, and the aesthetic was so much of what sold the first part of the game. Taken outside of the context of existing inside a larger whole this second part of the game is something I would consider at absolute best mediocre, and would be upset to have spent money on had something like this been expanded into a full game.
Another major mechanical shift comes later on, and this third part of the game returns to something closer to where the game was originally at. It lacks much of the earlier tension and magic, and the aesthetic is much worse too, but it acts as a fine enough diversion and has a few genuinely very enjoyable moments.
So there's one outright great section, one just barely passable section, and one third that is decent enough. So why am I not higher on the game, does this first act being so impressive not justify the latter mediocrity? A part of the problem is how disappointing the whole affair ends up being, never fully living up to the promise it shows early on. A bigger part of the problem though is what I gather is very much Daniel Mullins' schtick.
Inscryption has a lot of meta content that takes an increasingly larger presence on the game's stage. I knew this going in, as I'm sure anyone familiar with Mullins' name would be, and was curious to see it all in action. Whilst there are certainly some cute, enjoyable moments to it, especially early on in the game, so much of the meta content in this game is just shocking and weird for the sake of being shocking and weird, rather than having any actual substance to it. The whole experience just felt very hollow to me, and at its very worst the game can feel anywhere from scattered and unfocused to actually just downright childish.
It's just so frustrating because there's something wonderful in that early part of the game, and then it goes and turns into this.
I'm not going to spoil any actual story content from this point, but I will be talking about mid and late-game gameplay mechanics changes. I think there are people who will be suitably put off from the whole experience once they know the direction these mechanical changes head in and may value getting to read about these ahead of time, but if knowing anything about the direction the game's mechanics head in is going to upset you then stop reading now.
At the end of these first few hours of the game Inscryption's gameplay becomes markedly worse. It turns into a trading card game, as opposed to the first section's deck-builder nature, a genre that is just a lot harder to make actually work. A part of the problem is that the sheer elegance of the game's original mechanics is hurled to the wayside as it becomes bogged down under the weight of a bunch of new mechanics, whilst constantly tuning and retuning your deck from a vast pool of cards makes for an unbelievably worse gameplay loop than what came beforehand. Arguably an even bigger part of the problem is that the aesthetic is just so much less compelling in this second part too, and the aesthetic was so much of what sold the first part of the game. Taken outside of the context of existing inside a larger whole this second part of the game is something I would consider at absolute best mediocre, and would be upset to have spent money on had something like this been expanded into a full game.
Another major mechanical shift comes later on, and this third part of the game returns to something closer to where the game was originally at. It lacks much of the earlier tension and magic, and the aesthetic is much worse too, but it acts as a fine enough diversion and has a few genuinely very enjoyable moments.
So there's one outright great section, one just barely passable section, and one third that is decent enough. So why am I not higher on the game, does this first act being so impressive not justify the latter mediocrity? A part of the problem is how disappointing the whole affair ends up being, never fully living up to the promise it shows early on. A bigger part of the problem though is what I gather is very much Daniel Mullins' schtick.
Inscryption has a lot of meta content that takes an increasingly larger presence on the game's stage. I knew this going in, as I'm sure anyone familiar with Mullins' name would be, and was curious to see it all in action. Whilst there are certainly some cute, enjoyable moments to it, especially early on in the game, so much of the meta content in this game is just shocking and weird for the sake of being shocking and weird, rather than having any actual substance to it. The whole experience just felt very hollow to me, and at its very worst the game can feel anywhere from scattered and unfocused to actually just downright childish.
It's just so frustrating because there's something wonderful in that early part of the game, and then it goes and turns into this.
daniel mullins' One Weird Trick is a little insufferable, and this felt closer to three undercooked games than anything resembling a coherent three act structure, but in the most grudging ass way I gotta say I sorta admire how hard it goes toward being exactly the thing that it is
mechanically it's a mess: three rulesets, none of them fleshed out or balanced past first glance; all of them crumbling to powder under the slightest scrutiny or (god forbid) munchkinism. each very promising but failing to make good on that promise cos its fascination with cartoon dynamite self sabotage is too heavy
one of those fucked up tonal and pacing exercises that feels like someone starting and stopping a car abruptly over and over for like ten hours. when you finish you unlock "kaycee's mod" — a mode that repurposes its first act as a standalone roguelite — which gives the impression of a white flag or acknowledgement that everything past that point is nowhere near as compelling; some conciliatory gesture that shines a light on the dueling self satisfaction/consciousness that permeates the entire experience
when the smoke and mirrors are set aside it's hard not to be disappointed that its primary feature is an inability to see anything through long enough for it to be meaningfully substantiated. maybe that's the point, but I'm not the kind of poindexter who gets off on that stuff, and aside from a genuine love of card games, ARGs, and fucking with people there doesn't seem to be any meat to latch onto. my good friend Morris always asks me how art makes me feel, and this makes me feel like I'm watching someone prove how clever they are at their work's expense. a series of parlour tricks and sleight of hand routines that amount to very, very little and prompt only the most basic ruminations on Games and Creation — and only as a smokescreen for more bullshit artist wizardry. for my next trick I will saw my own game in half~
but like I said, I do like how strongly it commits to absolute derailure (made this word up, which is my iconic gimmick). takes some sizable measure of guts to unrelentingly make your art worse for the sake of a bit, I just wish that bit was in any way as charming or compelling as it thinks it is
mechanically it's a mess: three rulesets, none of them fleshed out or balanced past first glance; all of them crumbling to powder under the slightest scrutiny or (god forbid) munchkinism. each very promising but failing to make good on that promise cos its fascination with cartoon dynamite self sabotage is too heavy
one of those fucked up tonal and pacing exercises that feels like someone starting and stopping a car abruptly over and over for like ten hours. when you finish you unlock "kaycee's mod" — a mode that repurposes its first act as a standalone roguelite — which gives the impression of a white flag or acknowledgement that everything past that point is nowhere near as compelling; some conciliatory gesture that shines a light on the dueling self satisfaction/consciousness that permeates the entire experience
when the smoke and mirrors are set aside it's hard not to be disappointed that its primary feature is an inability to see anything through long enough for it to be meaningfully substantiated. maybe that's the point, but I'm not the kind of poindexter who gets off on that stuff, and aside from a genuine love of card games, ARGs, and fucking with people there doesn't seem to be any meat to latch onto. my good friend Morris always asks me how art makes me feel, and this makes me feel like I'm watching someone prove how clever they are at their work's expense. a series of parlour tricks and sleight of hand routines that amount to very, very little and prompt only the most basic ruminations on Games and Creation — and only as a smokescreen for more bullshit artist wizardry. for my next trick I will saw my own game in half~
but like I said, I do like how strongly it commits to absolute derailure (made this word up, which is my iconic gimmick). takes some sizable measure of guts to unrelentingly make your art worse for the sake of a bit, I just wish that bit was in any way as charming or compelling as it thinks it is
guys what the fuck
i have never been more invested in a video game for 3 days straight this is all i was able to think about.
i have a chemistry exam tomorrow
i am so fucked
i have never been more invested in a video game for 3 days straight this is all i was able to think about.
i have a chemistry exam tomorrow
i am so fucked
Right from the off, Inscryption is just a wonderful card game. The folk-horror cabin ‘escape room’ and enigmatic card sacrificing gameplay are just impeccable vibes. [Slight spoilers ahead]: I think the reason the meta stuff that follows works is because the core card gameplay remains relatively consistent, alongside the brilliantly elusive scrybe characters that drive the story. I must admit the opening is the highlight for me, but I enjoyed the deviation into Marble Hornets / creepypasta territory, as well as uncovering PT levels of buried secrets that encourage another playthrough or two.
Not usually a fan of card games but heard good things about Inscryption so gave it a try and I'm really glad I did! Definitely a game worth going into blind but I'll say the 2nd act brought it down a bit for me.
I think the thing that makes Inscryption work so well is that cards have always been mystical; used as superstitious epitithets for the ancient world around us. Harnessing that savage nature for a deckbuilder roguelike is game design harmony - but even on top of that, I think this is a very well paced and built out card game. The Bad RNG doesnt ruin hours and hours of a run because everything is snappy and plays out briskly. I wish there was way more.
Inscryption is a poly chromatic card-based odyssey that replaces deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror with a 2D adventure and poorly produced FMVs, resulting in a blood-laced ARG.
Real talk? As someone who quickly became apathetic to Marble Hornets and the flood of copycat ARGs that followed in turn I am deeply disappointed that Inscryption’s strong core it had laid out in its first act was merely a sacrificial lamb; sacrificed in service of chasing the creepypasta zeitgeist 10 years too late for the remaining 2/3rds of the game. Painfully predictable and cliché, Inscryption clumsily tells a story you’ve already heard plenty of times. Meta tomfoolery is such low hanging fruit in 2021, and it’s frustrating that Daniel Mullins would rather lampshade his own unfinished game IN UNIVERSE instead of giving it the legs it needed to run, because he legitimately struck gold with the initial foray into Leshy’s cabin. It’s tragic to me that I spent the majority of my playtime begging for it to end, because it is a goddamn feat to get me to sit down and embrace a rogue-anything. Now I am left wondering if it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Real talk? As someone who quickly became apathetic to Marble Hornets and the flood of copycat ARGs that followed in turn I am deeply disappointed that Inscryption’s strong core it had laid out in its first act was merely a sacrificial lamb; sacrificed in service of chasing the creepypasta zeitgeist 10 years too late for the remaining 2/3rds of the game. Painfully predictable and cliché, Inscryption clumsily tells a story you’ve already heard plenty of times. Meta tomfoolery is such low hanging fruit in 2021, and it’s frustrating that Daniel Mullins would rather lampshade his own unfinished game IN UNIVERSE instead of giving it the legs it needed to run, because he legitimately struck gold with the initial foray into Leshy’s cabin. It’s tragic to me that I spent the majority of my playtime begging for it to end, because it is a goddamn feat to get me to sit down and embrace a rogue-anything. Now I am left wondering if it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
This review contains spoilers
i wanted this to be a 5-star game SO badly
let's start with the obvious: yes, the game is Weird because it is trying to be Weird. the continual shifting of card game genres, the inter-spersed cheesy FMV, and the playful parts of looking through your files and threatening to delete them (and similar things) are playful and fun. it's nothing that Kojima or Taro haven't done, but i still appreciated the working of these into the "CREEPYPASTA REAL!!!! The Tale of Inscyption.exe [NOT CLICKBAIT]" aspects of the game.
unfortunately, the grand arc of the narrative is mostly forgetable. anyone who has spent more than 45 minutes on the internet knows about "ben drowned," so the unnerving aspects of the game mostly come across as a checklist of similar traits. i liked the characters a lot!! (Golly Respecters Rise Up) however, the game would be better without the last 2 minutes after the final button click.
in fact, my biggest problem with the game is its length. i think if you cut the number of required encounters down in the 2nd and 3rd Acts down by 33-50%, the game would flow more smoothly. my main reason for thinking of this is that the game has built-in power creep in order to help players through to the end, so the challenge of the game is easily broken if you know anything close to the basic fundamentals of a card game.
let me give you an example: i was able to break Act 1 very easily by using one cheap trick. i discovered an infinite combo in Act 2 right after defeating my first scribe, which i used to beat every fight after that point (https://youtu.be/wkCMHyXZGWg). i beat Act 3 while never using any of the items (other than the first time to each to see how they worked). my partner yelled at me every time i intentionally passed a spot to add a new card to your deck while i had to respond "trust me, this is better." the game isn't designed to be a tough, roguelite deckbuilder because it is inherently a story-driven game.
this isn't a mark against the game's design, i enjoy that about the game. i think many more people would have fallen off and not gotten to the first "reveal" at the end of Act 1 if the game was any harder. it's just a tricky case, because the game is About secrets that want to be found. however, this presents a conundrum when trying to recommend the game to someone.
starting a recommendation with "it's the crazy game that has all these weird things in it" is a bad thing to do, as it would ruin the suprises and the experience, so you have to No Sell it. you describe it as "a roguelite deckbuilder, in the style of Slay the Spire, mixed with Myst." the issue here is that the game is an incomplete one of those games, but on purpose! each of the games are unfinished versions (for story reasons) filled with exploits that act as secrets of their own that allow you to more easily get through to the end.
overall, i respect ambition and potentially-alienating design decisions a lot more than i respect polished products that offer a worse experience than something that another game already gives me.
(that's why Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective is one of my favorite games ever and why Kingdom Hearts 3 is one of the worst games i've ever played)
let's start with the obvious: yes, the game is Weird because it is trying to be Weird. the continual shifting of card game genres, the inter-spersed cheesy FMV, and the playful parts of looking through your files and threatening to delete them (and similar things) are playful and fun. it's nothing that Kojima or Taro haven't done, but i still appreciated the working of these into the "CREEPYPASTA REAL!!!! The Tale of Inscyption.exe [NOT CLICKBAIT]" aspects of the game.
unfortunately, the grand arc of the narrative is mostly forgetable. anyone who has spent more than 45 minutes on the internet knows about "ben drowned," so the unnerving aspects of the game mostly come across as a checklist of similar traits. i liked the characters a lot!! (Golly Respecters Rise Up) however, the game would be better without the last 2 minutes after the final button click.
in fact, my biggest problem with the game is its length. i think if you cut the number of required encounters down in the 2nd and 3rd Acts down by 33-50%, the game would flow more smoothly. my main reason for thinking of this is that the game has built-in power creep in order to help players through to the end, so the challenge of the game is easily broken if you know anything close to the basic fundamentals of a card game.
let me give you an example: i was able to break Act 1 very easily by using one cheap trick. i discovered an infinite combo in Act 2 right after defeating my first scribe, which i used to beat every fight after that point (https://youtu.be/wkCMHyXZGWg). i beat Act 3 while never using any of the items (other than the first time to each to see how they worked). my partner yelled at me every time i intentionally passed a spot to add a new card to your deck while i had to respond "trust me, this is better." the game isn't designed to be a tough, roguelite deckbuilder because it is inherently a story-driven game.
this isn't a mark against the game's design, i enjoy that about the game. i think many more people would have fallen off and not gotten to the first "reveal" at the end of Act 1 if the game was any harder. it's just a tricky case, because the game is About secrets that want to be found. however, this presents a conundrum when trying to recommend the game to someone.
starting a recommendation with "it's the crazy game that has all these weird things in it" is a bad thing to do, as it would ruin the suprises and the experience, so you have to No Sell it. you describe it as "a roguelite deckbuilder, in the style of Slay the Spire, mixed with Myst." the issue here is that the game is an incomplete one of those games, but on purpose! each of the games are unfinished versions (for story reasons) filled with exploits that act as secrets of their own that allow you to more easily get through to the end.
overall, i respect ambition and potentially-alienating design decisions a lot more than i respect polished products that offer a worse experience than something that another game already gives me.
(that's why Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective is one of my favorite games ever and why Kingdom Hearts 3 is one of the worst games i've ever played)
Considering that I think Inscryption is a game best enjoyed if you go into it knowing as little as possible, it's difficult to write a detailed review. Inscrytpion was not only a fun time, but it constantly surprised me along my entire journey with it. A real one-of-a-kind game that I enjoyed while playing, and now that it's over, I can't stop thinking about it.
The card game rogue-lite that they use for the first act of the game is honestly pretty solid even though I'm not the biggest fan of card game rogue-lites. I think the 2nd and 3rd act are more or less the same as the first but slightly weaker, which does diminish its staying power. The game has a pretty similar atmosphere as Daniel Mullins' previous games Pony Island and the Hex, but it didn't give me as many opportunities to explore outside of the core card game (the "metagame") as the Hex and Pony Island from my view, though I'm sure there are some secrets and leads that other more enterprising players have already discovered. All in all, I think I still like the Hex a bit more, but this is an interesting take on the interaction between video games and the player. I definitely would have loved more deconstruction of video game genres (more of the escape room/adventure game elements would have been great) similar to what the Hex did.
it takes the anti-game energy that daniel mullins mastered in pony island and adds a wildly addictive gameplay loop. the core gameplay is just so much fun, and the way the story unfolds is a perfect example of how to use games as a storytelling medium.
This review contains spoilers
Wow what a wild fucking ride, and really tough to talk about without delving into spoilers.So I'm going to have too here just a little. I'm gonna mark it as spoiler warning and try not to go too crazy, but some of this stuff just needs to be talked about to get a review out.
So, this is really a tale of three games, then a wild ending. The first part of this game is immaculate. A five out of five from me from act one, from the gameplay mechanics, to the atmosphere, to the exploration around the cabin. This is the best part of the game for me full stop, and leaves such a fantastic lasting impression.
Then you start to get the video bits intermixed in, which I loved, the backstory, and trying to piece together exactly what the hell is going on here.
Act 2, is the weakest act for me. I appreciate what it's doing as a bridge, and visually it looks awesome, love the pixel art, but I found it just fine, and the gameplay in that part isn't nearly as fun as the first or third acts, and I was mostly happy to be done that part fairly quickly. 3/5.
The third act is great. I definitely don't love it as much as the first, but exploring the map, and being able to choose your path, and again, exploring an area around you in between matches. Just great stuff. 4/5
Then the ending. Just bat shit insane, I love it. I don't fully understand it all, but it really uses the medium of video games effectively to create something special that would be hard to do otherwise.
Overall, I really dug this game a lot. While it's not perfect, and it can never quite hit the peak of the first act (besides the ending which is phenomenal) this is a game well worth your time, and a must play. Kudos to such a unique experience.
So, this is really a tale of three games, then a wild ending. The first part of this game is immaculate. A five out of five from me from act one, from the gameplay mechanics, to the atmosphere, to the exploration around the cabin. This is the best part of the game for me full stop, and leaves such a fantastic lasting impression.
Then you start to get the video bits intermixed in, which I loved, the backstory, and trying to piece together exactly what the hell is going on here.
Act 2, is the weakest act for me. I appreciate what it's doing as a bridge, and visually it looks awesome, love the pixel art, but I found it just fine, and the gameplay in that part isn't nearly as fun as the first or third acts, and I was mostly happy to be done that part fairly quickly. 3/5.
The third act is great. I definitely don't love it as much as the first, but exploring the map, and being able to choose your path, and again, exploring an area around you in between matches. Just great stuff. 4/5
Then the ending. Just bat shit insane, I love it. I don't fully understand it all, but it really uses the medium of video games effectively to create something special that would be hard to do otherwise.
Overall, I really dug this game a lot. While it's not perfect, and it can never quite hit the peak of the first act (besides the ending which is phenomenal) this is a game well worth your time, and a must play. Kudos to such a unique experience.
I'm in a weird spot writing about a game, that made me speechless. But also its so special and unique and so full of wonderful, crazy, terrifying, funny ideas, that I just don't want to take any of this away for anyone who is still to play this absolute gem of a video game. Inscryption is the game, I will reference from now on, when talking about why videogames as a medium are so free of any boundaries and therefore can get so absolutely wild. Videogames are a gift for creatives and storytellers, that are free to go to the craziest places, combine seemingly incompatible things with ease and still not lose their audience. And the best part of it is, as inscryption shows, you don't need the biggest budget for it. Inscryption managed to evoke many emotions, managed to keep me tense, invested and challenged at all times. It bursts with unsettling atmosphere but doesn't shy away from loosening a little by throwing in funny ideas that will make you grin at your screen. It's the work of someone who clearly loves the videogames of at least the past decade, understands how to transcend genres and distill great mechanics from various inspirations. It's a game for anyone who wants to take part in a wild ride, where you won't know where you'll be in half an hour. It denies any basis for expectations, it just toys with you, but not in a mean and disrespectful way. It's masterfully crafted and I'm in absolute awe of this game. The only thing I would want to make clear for anyone who is now intrigued after reading this, is, that you have to like or be willing to spend a lot of time with a card game and deckbuilding. It's not easy, so you won't be able to brute force through the game. But if you're willing to make that sacrifice, you will enjoy a smorgasbord of the weird and wild and something that won't leave you for a while. (Just try not to read about or watch anything of the game beforehand.) What an absolute blast, to finish one of the best games of 2021 right on the last day of the year.
This sure was a trip.
It starts off as a card game with roguelike elements, with an eerie and fascinating atmosphere. This is what is shown in all the promotional material for the game, and is by far the best part of the game. The card mechanics are well thought out, and they are introduced in a digestible manner. After a few runs of hardship and defeats, you learn all the ins and outs, and you are more than capable of constructing a decent deck. On every death, you also get an opportunity to design a card (an OP card, if you're smart about it), which you can then find in subsequent runs.
You play against a creepy, all-knowing being, who acts sort of like a DnD dungeon master. The atmosphere is thick, creepy, visceral. Your "damage points" are teeth that get put on an old-fashioned scale that determines who is winning each match, you get the opportunity to pull out one of your own teeth to tip the scale in your advantage, you have to sacrifice your weaker cards in order to play stronger ones, while your soon-to-be sacrificial victims quiver in fear. This is brilliant!
On top of that, you are free to leave the game board and walk around this being's cabin, that has some puzzles (old-school resident evil-like puzzles) sprinkled around. These puzzles give you new cards and clues on how to escape the "prison" of the game loop.
Then you finally do, and defeat the boss. Had the game stopped here, it would have been a nice, polished gem of a game.
Unfortunately it doesn't end here. After this point, the game goes meta. I can't say too much without spoiling, but just know that there is much more to this game than just this first part. And the rest of the game is nowhere near as fun and balanced. Card combat starts to feel like a afterthought, and difficulty plummets to almost zero.
Partly, this is intentional (at least, I assume). You are more compelled to get to the bottom of the great mistery behind the game, so difficult and engaging combat would probably feel like a drag. But, counter-intuitively, this "second part" is also where the game dumps a boatload of new, imbalanced and half-baked card mechanics, that you can basically just ignore as you steamroll your enemy.
I was pretty engaged by the overarching "big intrigue" that permeates the whole game, with the exception of a few parts where I felt that the game tries too much to be clever and "meta".
Had difficulty and mechanics remained consistent throughout the experience, I would have adored this game. As it stands, it still gets a good grade for its incredible ideas and narrative, that are unfortunately held back by questionable game design decisions in the second half.
If you like metacommentary, card gaming, and creepypastas, this is the game for you!
It starts off as a card game with roguelike elements, with an eerie and fascinating atmosphere. This is what is shown in all the promotional material for the game, and is by far the best part of the game. The card mechanics are well thought out, and they are introduced in a digestible manner. After a few runs of hardship and defeats, you learn all the ins and outs, and you are more than capable of constructing a decent deck. On every death, you also get an opportunity to design a card (an OP card, if you're smart about it), which you can then find in subsequent runs.
You play against a creepy, all-knowing being, who acts sort of like a DnD dungeon master. The atmosphere is thick, creepy, visceral. Your "damage points" are teeth that get put on an old-fashioned scale that determines who is winning each match, you get the opportunity to pull out one of your own teeth to tip the scale in your advantage, you have to sacrifice your weaker cards in order to play stronger ones, while your soon-to-be sacrificial victims quiver in fear. This is brilliant!
On top of that, you are free to leave the game board and walk around this being's cabin, that has some puzzles (old-school resident evil-like puzzles) sprinkled around. These puzzles give you new cards and clues on how to escape the "prison" of the game loop.
Then you finally do, and defeat the boss. Had the game stopped here, it would have been a nice, polished gem of a game.
Unfortunately it doesn't end here. After this point, the game goes meta. I can't say too much without spoiling, but just know that there is much more to this game than just this first part. And the rest of the game is nowhere near as fun and balanced. Card combat starts to feel like a afterthought, and difficulty plummets to almost zero.
Partly, this is intentional (at least, I assume). You are more compelled to get to the bottom of the great mistery behind the game, so difficult and engaging combat would probably feel like a drag. But, counter-intuitively, this "second part" is also where the game dumps a boatload of new, imbalanced and half-baked card mechanics, that you can basically just ignore as you steamroll your enemy.
I was pretty engaged by the overarching "big intrigue" that permeates the whole game, with the exception of a few parts where I felt that the game tries too much to be clever and "meta".
Had difficulty and mechanics remained consistent throughout the experience, I would have adored this game. As it stands, it still gets a good grade for its incredible ideas and narrative, that are unfortunately held back by questionable game design decisions in the second half.
If you like metacommentary, card gaming, and creepypastas, this is the game for you!
🎮 Platform: PC
⌚ Time to finish - 12h (75% completion)
🏆Trophy completion - 75% - all base game and no kaycee mod trophies were completed. This is a card game and act 1 is heavily random, so some of your trophies may take a while to get thanks to RNJesus. However, I did not mind and went for it.
🤬Difficulty - The game starts of very difficult, and I would say act 1 is still the most difficult. I slept through act 2. Mostly slept through act 3. I have experience with at least 200-300 hours of hearthstone, so that helps a lot here. Act1 - is midrange deck, act 2 is aggro deck, act 3 is ramp deck. Generally i find the game too hard or too easy. It never gets the difficulty right. For example... you can get a bunch of 1 cost 3/1 cards in act 2 and after easily....and you only need +5 damage on opponent to win. If you have some experience in card games you know how OP this is.
🌄Graphics – Its fine.... nothing to write home about. Sometimes it was overly dark... I don't know why. It doesn't add anything. Their creepy vibe was already in full effect without this extra frustration.
I am not going to say more but they try to do interesting things and change things up... however I feel they change it up too much! I get why they do it but things change all the time. Sometimes even boards change fight to fight and you keep having to adjust and learn. I guess overall I did not mind this as it forced me to not auto pilot the game.
🌦 Atmosphere/Music – Loved it. As with the whole game Act1 does it the best... then each act subsequently has less of it.
📚 Main Story / Characters – Not going to say anything to ruin it. But I liked the unique way the story is told. It reminded me of this one 90s movie that everyone was obsessed about. B******** (you know what I am talking about if you played the game :))
However, if you are looking for any sort of closure or clarity... well there is none of that. Its all just theories and sometimes far-fetched internet theories. Some of them are pretty cool.... apparently the internet has deciphered some polish note hidden in game clues, that explain the actual story of the game... I did not like this that the actual story is never told. What they do tell you is interesting but leaves more questions than answers. Very frustrating.
🤺 Combat – This is a card game. Are you familiar with Hearthstone, Magic, etc? Then you know exactly what to do. However, the most interesting parts of this game is the boss card battles, who bring super unique mechanics, and the slay the spire like game play. I guess the best way to describe this game is its a mix of slay the spire + hearthstone + escape room game. Its all very interesting..... up until the point where you hit the issue every card game has.... RNJesus and Counter decks, bad draws.
Overall the AI you play against feels smart, and never overly cheap.
🧭 Side Activities / Exploration – Worth doing! Explore everything!!!!! don't rush it. Press every button, go to every spot, try every card. DO EVERYTHING! there are so many mechanics in this game and exploration is rewarding. You often get something to help you if you are struggling.
🚗 Movement/Physics – Apart from unnecessarily dark walkways its fine.
📣 Voice acting – actual gameplay have no voice cutscenes do. It’s fine.
🥇 Best thing about the game - A mix of interesting card game elements and mechanics. A unique way of telling the story. Boss battles are the best. I wish i had a boss battle mode.
👎 Worst thing about the game - No real clarity on the greater story. I feel like we see one act in a large story. Possible string of bad RNG can F your runs. Act 1 is the biggest offender rest aren't bad.
💡Final Thoughts:
Definitely play it. It starts off strong a 4-4.5, ends as a 3.5. The boss battles are the best. I wish I could just play the bosses in a gauntlet so I can really experience their unique mechanisms. I also gave Kaycee mod a shot, which focuses mainly on act1 and playing it interesting and hard ways. However, I soon was reminded why I stopped play hearthstone, slay the spire, and more. There is so much RNG in card games that many runs are dead on arrival. And its just a grind. No thanks!
⌚ Time to finish - 12h (75% completion)
🏆Trophy completion - 75% - all base game and no kaycee mod trophies were completed. This is a card game and act 1 is heavily random, so some of your trophies may take a while to get thanks to RNJesus. However, I did not mind and went for it.
🤬Difficulty - The game starts of very difficult, and I would say act 1 is still the most difficult. I slept through act 2. Mostly slept through act 3. I have experience with at least 200-300 hours of hearthstone, so that helps a lot here. Act1 - is midrange deck, act 2 is aggro deck, act 3 is ramp deck. Generally i find the game too hard or too easy. It never gets the difficulty right. For example... you can get a bunch of 1 cost 3/1 cards in act 2 and after easily....and you only need +5 damage on opponent to win. If you have some experience in card games you know how OP this is.
🌄Graphics – Its fine.... nothing to write home about. Sometimes it was overly dark... I don't know why. It doesn't add anything. Their creepy vibe was already in full effect without this extra frustration.
I am not going to say more but they try to do interesting things and change things up... however I feel they change it up too much! I get why they do it but things change all the time. Sometimes even boards change fight to fight and you keep having to adjust and learn. I guess overall I did not mind this as it forced me to not auto pilot the game.
🌦 Atmosphere/Music – Loved it. As with the whole game Act1 does it the best... then each act subsequently has less of it.
📚 Main Story / Characters – Not going to say anything to ruin it. But I liked the unique way the story is told. It reminded me of this one 90s movie that everyone was obsessed about. B******** (you know what I am talking about if you played the game :))
However, if you are looking for any sort of closure or clarity... well there is none of that. Its all just theories and sometimes far-fetched internet theories. Some of them are pretty cool.... apparently the internet has deciphered some polish note hidden in game clues, that explain the actual story of the game... I did not like this that the actual story is never told. What they do tell you is interesting but leaves more questions than answers. Very frustrating.
🤺 Combat – This is a card game. Are you familiar with Hearthstone, Magic, etc? Then you know exactly what to do. However, the most interesting parts of this game is the boss card battles, who bring super unique mechanics, and the slay the spire like game play. I guess the best way to describe this game is its a mix of slay the spire + hearthstone + escape room game. Its all very interesting..... up until the point where you hit the issue every card game has.... RNJesus and Counter decks, bad draws.
Overall the AI you play against feels smart, and never overly cheap.
🧭 Side Activities / Exploration – Worth doing! Explore everything!!!!! don't rush it. Press every button, go to every spot, try every card. DO EVERYTHING! there are so many mechanics in this game and exploration is rewarding. You often get something to help you if you are struggling.
🚗 Movement/Physics – Apart from unnecessarily dark walkways its fine.
📣 Voice acting – actual gameplay have no voice cutscenes do. It’s fine.
🥇 Best thing about the game - A mix of interesting card game elements and mechanics. A unique way of telling the story. Boss battles are the best. I wish i had a boss battle mode.
👎 Worst thing about the game - No real clarity on the greater story. I feel like we see one act in a large story. Possible string of bad RNG can F your runs. Act 1 is the biggest offender rest aren't bad.
💡Final Thoughts:
Definitely play it. It starts off strong a 4-4.5, ends as a 3.5. The boss battles are the best. I wish I could just play the bosses in a gauntlet so I can really experience their unique mechanisms. I also gave Kaycee mod a shot, which focuses mainly on act1 and playing it interesting and hard ways. However, I soon was reminded why I stopped play hearthstone, slay the spire, and more. There is so much RNG in card games that many runs are dead on arrival. And its just a grind. No thanks!