You wake up in a dark cabin, chained to a worn table. A mysterious man is sitting on the other side of the room. The details of his face cannot be seen through the darkness, but his crazy eyes pierce the shadows. Something under your stomach twitches when he invites you to a game of cards. The rules seem simple; You summon creatures to attack your opponent’s enemy army and you easily win your first few hands. Still, you can’t shake the fear of what might happen if – no – if you lose. You keep playing, the eyes on the other side of the table are slowly burning a hole in your stomach.
Inscryption is an incredible piece of music that addresses horror topics while telling a compelling and ever-evolving secret. While these horror elements are important to the narrative, they’re just a backdrop for this adventure. I loved the moody atmosphere of Inscryption, but I also appreciate that it doesn’t impose anxiety on the player, which makes it a pretty accessible horror experience.
At the center of the adventure is a robust card combat system that you use to summon creatures in lanes on a battlefield. Your creatures deal damage to the creatures on the opposite side of their trajectories and, ultimately, directly to your opponent. The basic setup should be familiar to fans of games like Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering, but Inscryption brings some funny twists to the formula that got me to learn more. First of all, some creatures require a sacrifice to enter into battle. This means that if you want to summon a powerful creature like a bear, you will have to kill several beasts that you have already brought into the field. I liked the push / pull of trying to pull your strongest creatures into battle without thinning out your ranks too much.
Inscryption’s deck building system is also much deeper than it initially appears. For example, some creatures can only be called into battle after acquiring a certain number of bones through fallen allies. This enabled me to convert my defeats into victories; even when all of my creatures were wiped off the board, I often felt like I had an ace up my sleeve or were using some other strategy to turn the tide in my favor.
As you continue to defeat opponents, you’ll move along a game board and encounter random events à la titles like Slay The Spire. In some encounters you will receive new cards, buff existing cards or receive additional tools for combat, such as a fan that allows your creatures to fly over the heads of their opponents. You also have the option to put seals on your cards that offer unique powers, such as: B. the ability to transform into stronger creatures over time or attack multiple lanes at the same time. These elements give Inscryption a unique flavor to the card system, and I loved experimenting with my deck to find new card synergies or create brand new cards that almost felt overwhelmed.
Between card fights, you can get up from the table and explore your cabin. This room is full of locked drawers and other puzzle boxes. Solving these adventure game-like mysteries will bring you new cards and will bring you one step closer to deciphering the bigger mysteries of Inscryption. You eventually get some surprising revelations about who you are and why you are trapped in this cubicle, but the less I say about these revelations, the better. Inscryption successfully flipped my expectations several times before the journey was over, however, and I couldn’t wait to see the satisfying narrative ending.
Encryption is a curiosity of the best order. It’s a horror game that doesn’t aggressively try to scare you. It’s also a clever card system wrapped around a compelling mystery that plays with video game conventions. Like a bat out of Hell, Inscryption came out of nowhere and quickly became one of my favorite games of the year.
