Inscryption was on a lot of GOTY lists last year so I was looking forward to it when I finally got around to picking it up. Playing this duing the Halloween season was a good choice. I really enjoyed the sort of PS2-era graphics and overall creepy vibes. It made me feel like I’d been kidnapped by a version of Windom Earle that liked Magic: The Gathering instead of chess. The gameplay is also really tight and really snowbally in a fun way. It’s a lot of fun to find overpowered combos and exploit the game’s mechanics. While you can’t say that Inscryption isn’t a card game, I would like to argue that it’s actually a puzzle game where the “game in the game” is another one of the puzzles. Once you develop an understanding of the mechanics and what sigils synergize with others and understand what the Ouroboros and Fecundity do it kind of trivializes the card game part. Then, once you “solve” the card game puzzle in this way it moves on to a new puzzle.
I played for a while and then decided to take a break, feeling like with a few more tries I could beat the final boss at some point in the future. Luckily, my friends gave me some gameplay hints and pressured me to keep going. That is my #1 piece of advice for Inscryption: if you feel like you’ve gotten a good sense of what the game sort of is before you beat the final boss, you haven’t. Keep going, it’s worth it. Also: the Geck is the best card, so jot that down. I buffed the Geck the whole way to victory and it was incredibly satisfying, five star experience right there.
Click here for major spoilers.
The reveal after Act 1 that the entire game is a video recording from a trading card influencer was incredible. I did notice the weird screen flickering of what I realized later was the camera as well as the voiceover right at the beginning but I kind of forgot about it by the time I finally beat Leshy. I really liked Luke Carder, I thought he was fun and his ultimate fate makes me sad. It seems like a lot of people online didn't like him at all or thought he was "cringe" or something but I feel like his overfamiliar influencer persona really adds to the feeling of dread, like you're watching this guy walk into an obvious trap driven by his own obsession with card games. Plus it explains why this guy was filming everything at all. I do understand the argument that the Luke Carder frame story detracts from the game in some way because it kind of does get in between you and engaging with the "Inscryption" part of Inscryption. On the other hand, though, it probably made it a lot easier for the writers to break the fourth wall because they only needed to break the interior fourth wall of the frame story and not the real-life fourth wall that is between the real life game and real life player, if that makes any sense. My opinion is that it was really effective.
My biggest gripe with Inscryption is that it didn't seem like the central mystery really went anywhere? Like, a huge portion of the game is really driven by this desire to get to the bottom of what the fuck is going on with this spooky haunted video game and there isn't really an answer to that. Sure, there's like easter eggs about the OLD_DATA and an ARG to expand on the plot but they don't actually explain anything about why the game was like this, what happened to Kaycee, why GameFuna (or whoever) wanted the floppy back so bad, etc. I guess it contained occult Nazi magic or something like that? That's my current understanding. I do think the point is not necessarily the answers but rather the sense of mystery and sort of creepypasta aesthetic in itself. But at the same time, Inscryption starts of really strong with a really well designed rogue-like card game and then throws that in the garbage after Act 1, and the sole motivator to keep learning new mechanics and putting up with gameplay that just isn't as good is this mystery that is never really resolved.
I didn't like Act 2 very much at first but that's really just because I picked the wizard deck and didn't like the mox mechanics. Once I switched to the bones deck I got into the swing of it. Definitely not as good as Act 1 but the deckbuilding is quite fun once you decide on a strategy. Act 3 really lost me though for the same reason: I hate the robot/energy mechanic. Also, the vibes of Act 3 are rancid - I really missed the vibrancy and theatricality of Leshy's hut. That's definitely on purpose, in Act 3 PO3 is just using you to achieve their goals and on top of that only cares about the gameplay and mechanics, not the vibes, so his version of "Inscryption" is monochrome and lifeless. Like, I get it from a storytelling perspective, but it doesn't make it fun to play through. That and the respawn mechanic is just... tedious. The lifelessness of Act 3 makes the final rematch with Leshy all the more bittersweet. I wasn't expecting Leshy offering you a handshake right before getting deleted would be such an emotional moment. It was also incredibly cool to see the versions of "Inscryption" from Grimora and Magnificus right at the end. Magnificus' version having a literal duel disk from Yu-gi-oh was possibly the funniest joke in the entire game. But then, again, I feel a bit let down by the anti-reveal of the OLD_DATA being the final thing that happens.
But yeah anyway, complaints aside, everyone who said this was the best indie game of 2021 was right. Ten outta ten.