


The latest trailer for Inscryption introduces us to the game’s core systems. If those names mean anything to you, then you’ll already know not to take anything the game presents at face value. Teased during Steam Next Fest back in June this year, Inscription is the latest title from the creator of Pony Island and The Hex. As a hybrid of the two, it’s one of the best games of 2021.Inscryption is an unsettling card-duelling game in which you sacrifice squirrels to feed your powerful deck. As a pool of secrets, it’s deep enough to drown in.
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(Not that you have to take our word as gospel, either: If anything you’ve read here sounds bare-minimum intriguing, it’s certainly worth checking out the game’s free demo, which gives a taste of both the games’ card battles, and its love of puzzle-solving strangeness.)Īs a love letter to card games, it’s cunningly crafted, and full of fascinating twists. Inscryption is a frustrating game to describe with any thoroughness - at least, if you’re trying to do the good work of keeping its myriad spoilers away from your readers’ eyes. And if you think you’ve seen everything its cards have in store for you, well… like we said, there’s always another rug to pull. (Expect to spend 15 to 20 hours with it, not hundreds.) But it understands perfectly the appeal of those games, of crafting vicious strategies to break the board mechanically in half with carefully crafted, deliciously over-powered combinations. Inscryption the card game may not have the endless replayability of a Spire - its deck variety is a bit too simple, its focus on story too dominant. But all of it loops, with shocking refinement, back to the table, which is subject to the same fixation on endless mutation as the rest of the package. (Not coincidentally, Mullins and publisher Devolver Digital used one to promote the game.)Īnd, again: If that was all that was going on here, if the card game you start out playing in Inscryption was just a cover for the title’s puzzling obsessions, it would still be an interesting effort. What did that odd line of dialogue mean? Why is that door locked? Is that light fixture blinking at me in Morse Code? In the deliberate obscurity it fosters at its edges, Inscryption often provokes the willing apophenia of many of the best alternate reality games, those online scavenger hunts that drive a certain kind of nerdy mind to distraction, running obscure pieces of text through online Enigma machines. A commendable twist! Except we’re now at, roughly, rug-pull number one of a game that layers its sudden gameplay shifts so fiendishly and intricately that, a week after first hitting its definitive “ending,” we’re still being kept up late at night trying to puzzle out its deeper secrets.
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Suddenly, instead of a card game, you’re playing a light version of a Myst-ish escape room - but with the visual language, and many of the puzzle mechanics, still rooted in the card game it’s been teaching you how to play.įair enough. It writhes - as when your teacher/tormentor suddenly encourages you to stand up from the gaming table, allowing you to stretch your legs and walk around his shadow-soaked cabin.
