What I love about Inscryption is that not only does it manage to stand out in the card game space, which is not an easy thing to do, but that it almost relies upon the saturation of the space to really come alive. It’s as though it needs your familiarity with the other games in order to play around with what you expect. And, it has to be said, to play around with you.
Inscryption reviewDeveloper: Daniel Mullins GamesPublisher: DevolverPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Released 21st October on Steam, Humble, GOG for £16.79
You are the toy – that is clearly the theme. But you are trying to break out, and escape. But from what? What that being sat across the table from you, shrouded in the darkness, with only eyes visible, watching, boring into you. They seem to have complete control over you and the surroundings, this wood cabin in the middle of… you have no idea. It feels like it should be an American Wild West frontier, but it could be anywhere, if it’s really real at all. And yet, you’re free to walk around, to puzzle over the ornaments you find there. The only problem comes when you try to leave.
Inscryption is creepy. It’s ominous, it’s oppressive. It’s what you’ve probably already noticed by glancing at it. This is a card game that looks like a cursed reincarnation of something you’d play on a floppy disc in the ’90s: a low fidelity-but-trying kind of adventure, but hijacked by some kind of evil and then twisted and gnarled by malevolence. And this atmosphere seeps into you while you play. Toadish warbles of bass and threatening clanks of machinery prevent any comfort. Inscryption is deliberately unpleasant. It is beautiful.
This horrific theme permeates down into the card game you play. Briefly: it plays a bit like Magic: The Gathering in that you place creatures which attack the other player and chip away at their health, unless they’re blocked. Do enough damage and you win. In between battles, meanwhile, you move a piece along a map-board towards a boss, while stopping to build your deck, modifying your cards, and buying items for combat. In this, it’s like Slay the Spire.
But in Inscryption, the resource for playing creatures is blood, and you earn the blood by sacrificing. Thus, your adorable little squirrel already on the board becomes your default way of earning the blood droplet you need to summon something else. And later, you will unlock bone tokens, which you accrue when your creatures die. Pleasant, isn’t it?