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