THE LESS I SAY THE BETTER.
This is going to be the briefest of reviews because I frankly want to spoil nothing. If card games and puzzles are of interest, Inscryption satisfies both aspects extremely well. In fact, I didn’t even solve all the puzzles to unlock the cards and quite frankly I am disappointed in myself. However, even without solving all the external puzzles around the room the game is played in, figuring out strategies to stomp the opponents was a challenge to itself.
PLATFORMS: PC
MSRP: $19.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $19.99
The card gameplay is akin to Yu-Gi-Oh with sacrifices being required to play stronger cards as well as managing subsystems within play, but it truly is its own beast. The goal is to tip a scale so the opponent’s side is touching the table, and each weight added is a single piece of damage done to the opponent directly meaning that a monster attacked the opponent without another monster blocking its attack. It has a learning curve to be sure but slowly the game reveals its mechanics and will change those mechanics slightly as the story progresses and therefore doesn’t really punish the player for failing. The only real punishment is the time spent going through the levels again but it manages to stay fresh like a good rogue lite game would; every run is familiar but unique. This is a card game with a story (the titular card game is unfortunately fictional even though I sort of wish it wasn’t) so there is a linear path and the story progression is retained through failure.
All I can really say is that I think the narrative is extremely well done and I should have expected that coming from the guy who also created Pony Island which I thoroughly enjoyed as well. The art design and the audio design are also top notch. Expect to see this on plenty of GOTY lists as well as GOTY discussions because what I think Inscryption is extremely well done both in narrative and gameplay. I have a hope that maybe someday we see a multiplayer spin off because there’s still a lot this IP can offer, and I have friends who have played this as well and loved it and I really would like to challenge their decks. It could have survived on simply being a great card game and it managed to exceed that simple expectation and left me wanting more.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
