SPOILER WARNING – Minor design and narrative spoilers ahead for Inscryption
Do you like card games? Neither do I. I’ve never found the adrenaline pumping action of go fish or bridge that thrilling. As someone who typically spends her free time playing Dungeons and Dragons, or exploring open story driven video games, I’ve always found the lack of immersion or narrative in card games… meh? So, when I say Inscryption, a game solely developed by local Vancouver based creator Daniel Mullins and advertised as a digital strategy horror card game, is the best video game to come out in the last few years, I don’t say it lightly. It’s a really good card game. Well no sorry, that’s not it, because Inscryption really isn’t a card game its actual—-wa=—-;seoij—-q-eff765f35ew53fe— Wha= oitjh within th-wegf1655g game85654768—-=
Whoa. That was weird. Sorry. Anyways, as I was saying.
I cannot recommend Inscryption highly enough. The gameplay is well thought out, the aesthetic horrifyingly beautiful, and the mechanics are easy to pick up. And you will literally pick them up, because when you boot the game for the first time there is no option on the home menu to create a new game, only continue an existing one. It’s a strange design choice, and it sets the scene for Inscryption’s overall focus of making the player feel like something, although you may not know what, is wrong here. Besides the lack of a new game button, the menu instils an uncanny dread with its other visual elements — faceless human shapes on playing cards make up the clickable areas, and flickering lights with faded retro graphics make us feel like we are playing on a screen within our own screen. Before the game even starts Inscryption plants this idea that we are picking up a game that started long ago before we got here, and which has perhaps even been purposefully abandoned. The setting of the game world is a dark wooden one room cabin, created with stylish 3D graphics. Although later on the setting-5654DFIHOG5324—-F THHE7444DONT PLA3500OWNE—
Weird that happened again. Sorry… I’ve lost my train of thought… Oh, right.
The darkened 3D cabin has a haunting and ancient feel to it. The space brings to mind an escape room puzzle, with its minimally explorable area and strange alphanumerical riddles. Most glaringly there is a singular locked door, from behind which emanates a flickering bright light and mechanical clicking sound. However, while you are free to wander around the cabin, the main action takes place at a large wooden table where the only other person sits — a man mostly shadowed from view with crazed spiralling eyes and decaying long fingers beckoning for you to join him. The table, your main area of play, is adorned with cards depicting illustrations of animals, a pair of pliers, various bottles with even more cards, and an ancient looking scale weighed down by…. teeth.
To begin the gameplay, you sit down at the table as the nameless man across from you rolls out a map, and begins to tell a story of a lost traveller wandering the woods searching for a cabin. Quickly you realize this story is about you, the player, finding the cabin you are now in. At various moments the man pauses the story, and a round of cards is played. The card game is brutal not only in difficulty but also in its dark, body horror-esque visuals. Each round you strategically play various animals with differing abilities and strengths in a showdown against the man’s animals. But there’s a catch — each new card played costs blood, requiring you to sacrifice other cards to gain enough currency. The process is nothing but cruel. You will often find yourself playing cards depicting a scared squirrel only to stab a knife through it in order to play a stronger, more vicious creature. “A worthy sacrifice” the man will grumble from across the table. Each successful point in your favour materializes more golden teeth on the scale tipping it towards victory. If you’ve played your cards right hopefully you won’t need to turn to those rusty pliers for something more desperate… Each round won ends in material rewards, more cards, and more story progression. But then, just as you’re starting to get the hang of the game, and the sensation that the tutorial hand holding is ending, the macabre card duels become even more upsetting when the cards start talking to you. Begging with you. Hinting to you what cards to play next and what items, beyond the table in the cabin itself, you need to find, and how if only you can get past that flickering clicking door then you can all000000000000000000000000f———=9——890-8245—2355253546235423-0sef;j eESCAAAAAPE4..—
What was I saying? Where — Oh right. The review…
The card game is strategically quite difficult and it takes a while to get the hang of each round, building your deck to suit your own unique play style. While winning a round against this mysterious man feels like a great achievement and is rewarded with strategic prizes, the true boon is the continuation of his tale. Each card duel that falls in your favour means more is revealed — the story of you, how you got here, and…. where is here anyways? Who is this man? Why did this game start halfway through? Wait why am I recommending you play—-WAIT=wre447w574—-2353
Sorry… I’m not feeling very well…
As someone who doesn’t often enjoy card games, I was pleasantly surprised by how much the complexity, difficulty and narrative devices of Inscryption changed my opinion of ‘strategy’ on a fundamental level. The critical thinking the game required of me — to make tough choices, to think far in advance and to know when to call it quits — challenged me in ways that other games haven’t. And it scared me. It really scared me. Because Inscryption is, if you haven’t guessed already, a game that isn’t what it appears to be. Much like the other work of Daniel Mullins, a local master of the bizarre indie game, Inscryption is a horrific mystery of the highest calibre structured within a well animated, well designed and addictingly difficult card game. Its use of confined space, 4th wall and ARG plot points, live action cinematics, haunting sound effects, existential dread, and the most terrifying character to emerge in recent horror games, a Computer————-/-/34/3—4—-3///65458oi65614
So001rry.. I10’m.. n0tt.. fee1ll00in0g we10ll 01000100 01001111 01001110 01010100 00100000 01010000 01001100 01000001 01011001 00100000 01010100 01001000 01000101 00100000 01000100 01001001 01010011 01001011