Inscryption Review

I remember when I was a kid seeing all these amazing advertisements for theme parks and rollercoasters, none of which were within driving distance of my home and wondering what they were like – how much fun they’d be or if they’d be scary. I didn’t get a chance to finally find out until I was in my 20s, and while I can’t say it converted me to the church of thrills and spills, I left with an appreciation for why all of those neon pink and green windbreaker wearing park-goers looked so happy in the commercials. If none of this makes any sense but you’re still mildly intrigued as to where this is all going, I’ve got great news – you’re going to love Inscryption. Also, and stop me if you’ve heard this before but…I’m going to have to dance around A LOT of spoilers here, so forgive the vagueness. It’s been a heck of a season for games that you just can’t spoil around here.

If you’ve ever played other deck-building rogue-likes then the core of Inscryption’s gameplay won’t be completely foreign to you, though it does come with its own spin on things of course. You’re sat in front of your would-be game master, though you can’t make out much about their features and their voice is represented only by low-frequency synth rumblings. They’re oddly inviting, despite the less-than-inviting atmosphere, and they walk you through a story the way you’d expect an experienced D&D DM to. A token on the board, you move from one point to the next with some branching path choices on occasion. Of course, many of these points are battles waiting to happen, but some are also opportunities to strengthen your deck or obtain other buffs and boons. Totems for example can give abilities to cards in your deck of a certain tribe, while campfire stops can simply improve the stats of a chosen card. You’ll also receive or collect items (up to a max of three at a time) that can be used in combat to help tip the scales in your favour – and I say that not just figuratively but literally, too.

Combat scenarios play out on a card grid of varying sizes either completely open or with obstacles in play and is a turn-based system with the goal of doing enough damage to your opponent to tip the scale of battle a total of 5 points to the opposing side. The scale is quite literally just that, a scale and every point of damage is measured with a tooth. Where the teeth come from, is perhaps better left unknown, though one of those aforementioned items may help you and hurt you, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down. The scale is actually one of the more unique features of combat in Inscryption because it changes the dynamic of player and opponent health. While your goal is to do five points of damage, if your opponent does damage on their turn, it tips the scale back in your direction. This back-and-forth adds an interesting element of strategy where you can’t simply rely on a static health pool but operate around a constantly moving target both to keep yourself alive and to ultimately win the round. It also means that if you’re lucky enough you can end many bouts in two turns, but that’s not always a possibility.

This is also why cards don’t often have huge health and damage numbers. Matches are usually quite short, and it’s more about a cohesive and efficient strategy than always brute forcing your way through. Instead of mana or energy in the traditional sense, most cards require a certain amount of blood sacrifice or similar to play. That requires sacrificing cards on your board which means losing that card from play, so you have to really choose wisely how you ramp up. Your deck has a static number of squirrel cards that serve as your primary sacrificial sources and a number of creature cards to do the real work. At the start of each turn, you’ll get to by default draw one card from either your sacrificial pile or your creature pile. This limited card draw makes your deck-building choices even more important as you can’t afford to have dead weight in your hand for more than a turn or two in most scenarios.

Should you unfortunately fall in battle, it doesn’t come with an immediate reset. Instead, you are given two lit candles, each representing your chances within the game. Having both snuffed outcomes with your run being snuffed out the same, and you’ll go back to square one to start again. You do have opportunities to earn back a lost candle, but you’ll have to earn it. Boss battles are inevitably an obstacle in your path, and each has unique gimmicks that either modify the existing rules of the game or add to them new rules altogether that you’ll have to learn. That learning process, depending on how the matches play out, might mean losing to them at least once but I suspect few people will fall to a boss more than one time once they figure out the gotcha. These scenarios also contain multiple phases and offer up the opportunity to earn back a lost candle should you have stumbled en route to their doorstep should you leave the victor.

The mystery surrounding the game and the game master builds as eventually, they request you get up from the table to collect something for them across the room. It’s the first of many twists of both narrative and gameplay that Inscryption throws your way and results in as many new questions as those it answers. The room is suitably dark and seems to be a cabin of sorts with a most mysterious back door you can’t open that has a flashing light in the room it guards. There are things to interact with around the room, but it’s ultimately up to you if, when, and how you interact with them. Just when you think you’ve figured something out, you’re thrown for a loop with something else and but for a handful of talking cards that seem to know more than they’re letting on and the scant clues you may or may not find, you’ll rarely feel like you’ve ever truly figured it all out.

That’s about as much as I can give away without ruining the experience. Inscryption is as much a game as it is a psychologically guided narrative, the success and potency of which all but entirely depends on the player knowing as little as possible going in. There’s a lot going on here, and things that can’t be shown in the video review for the same reasons I can’t write about them. Inscryption is a rollercoaster on top of a rollercoaster, riding another rollercoaster and has innumerable secrets to uncover that a single or even multiple playthroughs may not uncover entirely. While the narrative twists and turns all make a graceful landing, not all their gameplay counterparts touched down as eloquently. One segment, in particular, resulted in me restarting the entire piece because while I could see how it would be possible given the choices I made, it was nearly insurmountable and far too reliant on RNG. After the restart and with different choices made, I cleared the segment with little issue likely as intended. Besides that little bump in the road, there is a symptomatic repetitiveness you’ll experience that is mildly combatted with various visual and mechanical changes but I couldn’t help still feeling like I was going around in circles perhaps one too many times despite the payoffs ultimately being satisfying.

While I wouldn’t necessarily say that Inscryption is in the realm of horror, it’s not not at least dusted with a bit of the ghoulish. Thematically sacrificing cards to summon others and weighing the scales of fate with teeth pulled from who knows where and being held captive in a dark cabin with no option but to play out the game set before you is a bit macabre, after all. Despite that, I would push it more to the thriller side of the spectrum – not that there’s often a huge leap between thriller and horror. Regardless, Inscryptions aesthetic is a wonderful mashup of truly old-school pixelated PC renders and more modern flares that shift as often as the narrative. It’s very lo-fi from top to bottom – especially so regarding the music and sound effects which were both lovely and grating at the same time and may not be for everyone. As much as I enjoyed the visuals, there were more than a few times in which they got in the way of a good user experience. Font clarity specifically in spots is awful and on more than a few occasions I wasn’t sure what inputs the game was hoping I would use because of little feedback – not all of which was intentional, I’m sure. Overall, it’s an audiovisually unique experience as much as the game itself is unique and I applaud the variety it provides from beginning to end.

That’s actually my takeaway from Inscryption as a whole – I applaud the variety it provides from beginning to end. On the surface, it’s another rogue-like deck builder, but that’s more or less a front despite that portion being particularly competent and unique in and of itself. There’s a lot to unpack and discover in Inscryption and it’s one of the most unique games I’ve played in ages that truly lives up to the idea of “you have to see it to believe it.”  Whether or not you’re a huge fan of the deck builder genre, if you’ve been looking for something to really shake up your gaming routine and appreciate a little bit of a thriller, a little bit of mystery, and a whole lot of twists and turns, Inscryption should without question be at the top of your list.