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

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.

a combination of two indie game scenes i have next to no interest in (deckbuilders and roguelites), by a guy whos last quirky crazy meta game i thought was Nice but maybe not anything i havent rly seen before, and the result is, if maybe not an all-time favorite, certainly one of those things that just makes me think that maybe video games are the best medium after all. the mechanical unity is rly key to this one's success vs the vignettes of pony island or something similar like frog fractions...no matter what happens, yr always playing a very enjoyable card game that takes advantage of its non-symmetrical pve style to the fullest extent, with enjoyable and surprising iterations throughout. all thats left is for it to deliver an enjoyable creepypasta that speaks at least a few emotional truths about competing creative visions, and maybe creativity in general. the disarming sentimentality that graces moments of the finale is well earned...there is much to be attached to, in the intimacy of learning how to play, and in the desire to give everything a Voice to be heard and understood

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.

Inscryption é um jogo de carta inteligentíssimo, transporta a experiência de um TCG e os elementos de deck building magistralmente, tudo amarrado em uma narrativa super inspirada, existe alma por trás desse projeto.

Ainda que exista alguns tropeços no balanceamento (tem partida que você já começa perdendo, e você nem desceu nenhuma carta, o RNG é um canalha), uma performance questionável no ps4 e muito da meta narrativa tenha se perdido por está jogando no console, eu entendo a intencionalidade por trás das decisões.

Esse é o tipo de jogo que sempre achei que ia gostar, mas... uau, tó surpreso mesmo assim.

Inscryption es una oda a los videojuegos.
Con una mezcla de juego de cartas y Roguelike, este juego se convierte en uno de mis GOTY de la vida gracias a su historia, ambientación, jugabilidad y un mil de etcétera más.

Si me preguntan qué es lo que más me ha gustado y lo que menos solo puedo decir: Juégalo.

Nota: 10.

Wish I could go back and experience this blind again - a relatively simple premise that gets milked for everything it's worth (in a good way), lots of interconnectivity and trickery.

Strong recommend.

Also has an endless mode which, whilst fun, can be repetitive.

Inscryption é um jogo deck builder (cartinhas) com bastante terror, um tanto de rogue like, um pouco de escape room e um bocado de segredos e doideira, com um enrredo surreal brilhante fechando com chave de ouro. Um game que a todo momento se modifica e surpreende.

Falo melhor aqui https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=div3yc9BosE SEM SPOILERS

E não leia os outros reviews... galera já começa com spoiler no paragrafo 1. Ai é foda...

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

Despite being a combination of two things I hate in video games, roguelikes and cards, my Eternal Optimist (Dumbass) status led me to giving this a shot. It looks pretty cool, actually! People say it "goes places"!

The problem is, when a game "goes places," those Places should be better than where you're Going From.

The first part of the game, like pretty much all games of this type, comes down to trial-and-error, and hoping to get a random loadout that breaks the game and allows you to overcome the enemy player's horseshit. Get a high-damage card with the 3-attack sigil and it's ogre for the bad guy. Then, you get to the second part of the game, which consists of the card game from the first part, but with a very boring art style, meant to evoke the Pokemon TCG game boy game.

At this point I lost interest, and the plot about creepypasta haunted games or whatever the fuck wasn't interesting to me, either. I love when games insert random FMV segments (you know I'm looking forward to Alan Wake 2), but this wasn't even a particularly good implementation of it. And from what I've heard, the third part of the game is even worse. I will never know.

4/10 - One third of the game is alright, and one bonus point for neat integration of DualSense features in the PS5 version.

inscryption é um jogo muito interessante que me deixou em dúvida sobre o quanto eu gostei ou não da experiência como um todo, mas que apesar disso vale muito a pena ser experimentado sabendo o mínimo possível. eu respeito o que ele tenta fazer e até admiro algumas coisas que ele conseguiu, e tem um roguelite de construir decks de carta bem engajante como a sua base, o que por si só já recebe uma recomendação minha.

a partir daqui eu vou falar sobre aspectos que são leves spoilers (na maior parte sobre gameplay, mas comentando um detalhe narrativo revelado no segundo ato da trama) caso queira jogar sem saber NADA mesmo.

acho que a coisa que me frustrou um pouco na maneira que o jogo vai entrando na rota metalinguística é que os outros sistemas de cartas usados não são fortes o bastante quanto o do primeiro ato. nenhum dos 2 atos seguintes atinge a elegância presente nas mecânicas usadas no começo do jogo, que envolve a formação de decks com a necessidade de constante sacríficio de cartas junto de diversas variedades complementares. a única coisa que os sistemas seguintes herdam é a relativa facilidade em criar um deck quebrado, algo que é interessante quando aplicado no começo, quando o jogo deixa claro que as regras estão constantemente te colocando em desvantagem, mas que conforme os aspectos roguelites vão sendo deixados de lado para dar enfase na história (que eu até gostei, apesar de ser um pouco ARG demais pro meu gosto), acaba trivializando um pouco demais as batalhas. no segundo ato eu pude me grudar em um deck que eu fiz relativamente cedo e completei a seção inteira com ele sem mudar quase nada. o sistema do terceiro ato não sofre tanto desse problema mas também não atinge a engenhosidade do primeiro, tanto que a gimmick do chefe mais interessante dessa parte quase não envolve as cartas utilizadas.

em conclusão, inscryption é um jogo que eu meio que gosto, apesar de ter me frustrado um pouco após abandonar sua mecânica mais interessante. mas eu não detesto o resto do jogo. como mencionei anteriormente, eu não sou tão chegada em pesquisar sobre ARGs para poder entender detalhes da história mas esse jogo até que esconde informações interessantes nesse método, que acabam não sendo supérfluas e que trazem um contexto interessante para a narrativa. eu gosto também dos puzzles do segundo ato e dos chefes do terceiro ato. a trilha sonora também vende muito bem o tom que o jogo segue.

acho que é isso mesmo.

An Amazing experience

My friend has been telling me to play Inscryption for a while now since he knows I love deck building rougelikes and I can understand why now. Inscryption is an amazing experience through and through that should be played by all Rougelike fans and non alike.


This will be short

There is a good reason why I don’t like going into spoilers in my reviews and this game embodies that. I will not be going into anything, all I will say is play this game with as little info as you possibly can. It will truly elevate the overall experience.


In the end

This game vastly gained exposure when it was released so most of you probably know about this game by now. If you haven't, however I highly recommend this game at full price. It's well worth every penny and I am now very intrigued to play this dev's other titles.