You come across a trader offering to sell pelts in exchange for teeth. You haplessly disappoint him when you reveal you have no teeth with which to barter with. The trader eyes you over carefully before allowing you to go on your way, but not before musing that the next time you meet it’d be wise if you brought some teeth. And trust me, the trader will have his teeth.
Any game from the creator of Pony Island is sure to set off alarm bells that not all is what it seems, and from the immediate outset Inscryption tips its hat in that regard but the game dares you to try to make sense of it. Upon waking, you’re greeted by a stranger cloaked in shadow save for its wild eyes that offers to teach you to play a card game. It’s this game that makes up the foundation of Inscryption’s gameplay, but don’t be fooled that’s all there is.
One part card game, one part escape room/roguelike, Inscryption blends genres in clever ways that kept me hooked. When at the table with the stranger, you’re able to get up (whenever you’re not in a game) and explore the cabin you’re locked in. Interacting with objects immediately clues you in on puzzles that need solving, and in Inscryption sometimes the only way to move forward was to lose. Each death gained me something new, whether it be a new card or a clue to the cabin such as where to find the code to a mysterious safe.
There’s a constant sense of surreal unease as you play the game, aided in part from the unnerving sound design and how tricky some of the card battles can get. While incredibly simple to wrap your head around its mechanics, the deeper you delve into its systems the more you’re made aware of its potential depth. You and the stranger both have a field to play cards on and each turn you can choose to draw a card from your deck, or a free squirrel card. Squirrels are free to play onto the field but the goal is to deal damage to the stranger and the squirrel isn’t equipped to do that. Instead you can choose to sacrifice it to summon more powerful cards like wolves or bears. This creates the flow of the game as you juggle between drawing squirrels to use as sacrifices, or pulling a powerful card from your main deck. Progress enough and bones are then introduced to the game, where you’ll get a bone for every creature killed that are used to summon creatures that can’t be summoned by normal sacrifices.
This is when the true depth of Inscryption really starts to rear its head, as you move through the map collecting cards to build a powerful deck. In one run I was focusing on bone cards, as I threw squirrels at the stranger, each death gaining me a bone I then used to summon creatures with powerful abilities. Progressing through the game reveals a variety of encounters on the map that force you to carefully choose a path, similarly to how FTL’s map worked. Do you take the path that’ll lead you to an easy battle with the stranger and a bundle of potentially helpful items, or perhaps you’re feeling lucky enough to take the more difficult path whose reward is a powerful permanent upgrade to a card? No path is wrong, but best believe you’re going to hurt regardless.
From its unsettling visuals, to the haunting soundtrack, Inscryption makes one of the strongest first impressions I’ve seen from a game.
