A found footage game? hhhmm. I am not so sure if that works for me. It feels one step removed from the more understood found footage film. Of course, 'Let’s play' commentators and Twitch streamers are prevalent but I think you have to pretend a little to be fully persuaded of the captured footage motif. It is ‘you’ controlling the avatar and the game doesn’t really resolve that other than jazzing out to the tune of a meta fiction. When Luke calls out with a great play or comments on a bad beat, the meta theme does come back into an enjoyable focus but it never feels all encompassing.
Nevertheless, what this meta fiction allows the design team to do is to infuse a whole lot of expectation of the unknown. After your first dose of acted out footage you begin to wonder just what else can happen. The width and limits of the game are drawn open and experiencing that is a wonder. From building your own boss battle, to creating your own cards, it fully deserves its Seamus McNally prize and all of its plaudits.
So where do I stand then? Well, I come at the game as a tabletop game developer and it was through Inscryption’s tabletop card game roots which drew me in. Taken as a simple, rogue like deck builder. It is brilliant. I would love a physical version, that, indeed, somehow also incorporated the game’s get-up-out-of-your-seat mechanisms. And then creating a new card from scratch after each of your failed runs? It would be ingenuous in the tabletop space. A legacy game plus. That the game goes further and beyond this initial remit not only breaks through the forth wall in a novel way, but it also breaks down the expectations of genre or even, if you were to feel so lofty, interactive entertainment. The notion that a game can become anything else, another genre or even medium? It maybe does not quite hit the landing but the choice of its gymnast's trick is to be applauded.
One moment of greatness the game did achieve was in reading my Playstation Network friends list and creating enemy cards based off of them for me to compete against. That it populated the other side of the board with cards baring the name of a dead friend’s inactive username was startling and beautiful. A ghost in the machine. One last game against my friend. That I then immediately lost that duel due to my friends overpowered "cheating" cards was joyous and wonderful. He was often a person of wry playfulness and would happily cheat in a friendly way if it brought laughter. Art reflecting life, or was it rather life reflecting onto art...
For this, Inscryption will be eternally inscribed into my internal hall of fame almost regardless of my thoughts on the matter. I have been photographed and captured.
Nevertheless, what this meta fiction allows the design team to do is to infuse a whole lot of expectation of the unknown. After your first dose of acted out footage you begin to wonder just what else can happen. The width and limits of the game are drawn open and experiencing that is a wonder. From building your own boss battle, to creating your own cards, it fully deserves its Seamus McNally prize and all of its plaudits.
So where do I stand then? Well, I come at the game as a tabletop game developer and it was through Inscryption’s tabletop card game roots which drew me in. Taken as a simple, rogue like deck builder. It is brilliant. I would love a physical version, that, indeed, somehow also incorporated the game’s get-up-out-of-your-seat mechanisms. And then creating a new card from scratch after each of your failed runs? It would be ingenuous in the tabletop space. A legacy game plus. That the game goes further and beyond this initial remit not only breaks through the forth wall in a novel way, but it also breaks down the expectations of genre or even, if you were to feel so lofty, interactive entertainment. The notion that a game can become anything else, another genre or even medium? It maybe does not quite hit the landing but the choice of its gymnast's trick is to be applauded.
One moment of greatness the game did achieve was in reading my Playstation Network friends list and creating enemy cards based off of them for me to compete against. That it populated the other side of the board with cards baring the name of a dead friend’s inactive username was startling and beautiful. A ghost in the machine. One last game against my friend. That I then immediately lost that duel due to my friends overpowered "cheating" cards was joyous and wonderful. He was often a person of wry playfulness and would happily cheat in a friendly way if it brought laughter. Art reflecting life, or was it rather life reflecting onto art...
For this, Inscryption will be eternally inscribed into my internal hall of fame almost regardless of my thoughts on the matter. I have been photographed and captured.