Gameplay note: I played through Inscryption with my wife, with her controlling the deckbuilding parts and me controlling the ARG / escape room parts. She had a better time with it than I did, as she is in general more into deckbuilding games.
Extremely mixed feelings on this game. On one hand there was a lot I really liked, but it also waaay overstayed its welcome and had some absolutely grueling parts.
Act 2 grinds the entire game to a halt, and Act 3 has some really cool stuff like Act 1..... except it makes you replay all of Act 2, basically.
Act 2 felt very rough cause i just very abruptly went from having an extremely good time to feeling like everything ground to a halt and now this ok-but-bland retro deckbuilder is in the way of an interesting mystery. And i know this is probably a more esoteric criticism but i think the UI in act two actually makes a lot of poor choices regarding low contrast monochrome for elements when a lot of the backgrounds are full colour. It basically feels like Gameboy graphics over a GBA game and the vibe is… bad? Confusing? Tiring?
The real criticism i will go Esoteric Nerd with is that when the youtuber pulls the floppy disk out of the ground the cover is open and a visible piece of dirt is stuck to the inside ring the entire time and i know it’s a haunted "ben drowned" cartridge situation but the entire time I’m just like “that disk is broken and none of these graphics would fit in that floppy”
Every time a video dump happened during act two I leapt for the controls because I was just starving for literally any interesting content.
And when act 3 hits it is MUCH stronger and really refreshes the vibes, but then it drags itself out sooooo much longer.
The worst part of it is, I think, the fact that literally nothing of the cause behind the supernaturality is even hinted at. It's just vaguely spooky, with vaguely retro aesthetics, but all so shallow that it feels deeply unsatisfying by the end.
Extremely mixed feelings on this game. On one hand there was a lot I really liked, but it also waaay overstayed its welcome and had some absolutely grueling parts.
Act 2 grinds the entire game to a halt, and Act 3 has some really cool stuff like Act 1..... except it makes you replay all of Act 2, basically.
Act 2 felt very rough cause i just very abruptly went from having an extremely good time to feeling like everything ground to a halt and now this ok-but-bland retro deckbuilder is in the way of an interesting mystery. And i know this is probably a more esoteric criticism but i think the UI in act two actually makes a lot of poor choices regarding low contrast monochrome for elements when a lot of the backgrounds are full colour. It basically feels like Gameboy graphics over a GBA game and the vibe is… bad? Confusing? Tiring?
The real criticism i will go Esoteric Nerd with is that when the youtuber pulls the floppy disk out of the ground the cover is open and a visible piece of dirt is stuck to the inside ring the entire time and i know it’s a haunted "ben drowned" cartridge situation but the entire time I’m just like “that disk is broken and none of these graphics would fit in that floppy”
Every time a video dump happened during act two I leapt for the controls because I was just starving for literally any interesting content.
And when act 3 hits it is MUCH stronger and really refreshes the vibes, but then it drags itself out sooooo much longer.
The worst part of it is, I think, the fact that literally nothing of the cause behind the supernaturality is even hinted at. It's just vaguely spooky, with vaguely retro aesthetics, but all so shallow that it feels deeply unsatisfying by the end.
Reviewed on Jan 02, 2023