Inscryption is a rougelike deck-building game developed by Daniel Mullins Games. However, it further blends turn-based strategy, escape room like puzzles, and an adventure-style narrative while incorporating elements from tabletop role-playing games, horror, vlogs, and found footage to be a multilayered game. This does not even account for the real-world alternate reality game that is embedded, which adds a metafictional aspect while providing fun Easter eggs for players to decrypt throughout the game.
From an initial run, due to a lack of context and my slow uptake in strategy games, I struggled in the card duels against the Game Master. As such, I was speedily handed my death and met with the gruesome scene of Leshy using his camera to make a card out of me. As someone who does not do well with horror, the scene thoroughly creeped me out, and it almost deterred me from carrying on. However, with curiosity and a mix of time and practice, I learned how to build stronger decks and gauge when to use which cards in a duel. The inclusion of buffs also took me a minute to fully utilize; however, with time, I came to appreciate their assistance to help me win duels and stay alive.
Outside the card playing, the escape room aspects piqued my interest. When I learned that I could maneuver around the cabin when not immersed in a given map scene, I was haphazardly clicking on every object in the room, seeing if any new scene would result. Though that didn’t initially yield results, I liked how encountering the talking cards during card duels provided clues to solve the various puzzles in the cabin. I further liked how such exploration was encouraged if not necessary to continue strengthening my deck such that I could prevail in the boss battles. In this sense, the developers did a wonderful job in ensuring players catch and appreciate the little details
As for the animations and sound design, I found that they did well to accentuate the trepidation of the challenger / player, whether it be from the shaking hand clutching the cards during duels, the lurching ambient sounds, or the bright, looming eyes of Leshy as he switches from mask to mask. The lighting in the cabin also provided an eerie glow to all the objects in the room to further evoke a sense of discomfort.
Though I did not have time to continue playing the game myself, I watched a playthrough on YouTube to see how the rest of the story unfolded out of pure curiosity. And as alluded to in the introduction, I have never played a game with such a strong metaphysical sense to it. In brief, I learned that handling Leshy concluded only the first of three parts and that the latter two would introduce new game formats and styles (like pixel art) in addition to a whole separate narrative set in the real world with its own sinister undertones. Watching the rest of the game played out left me with more questions than answers, but in that sense, I take that as a sign to continue playing and experience the whole, metafictional narrative myself.
