Are you the kind of person that prefers to get their Halloween thrills with a gaming controller in hand? Well, look no further than Inscryption, a puzzle box of a game with roguelike elements that centers on deckbuilding and exploration to uncover the secrets of a dark cabin and its mysterious inhabitant. The game was released in 2021, and it was considered one of the best games of that year.
The less you know about the game other than its mechanics, the better. You’re in a dark cabin, it’s raining hard outside, and your seated in front of a man shrouded in shadows. You play a strange card game with him, desperate to beat him at it so you can maybe escape from the twisted scenario you’ve been placed in.
The thing with the cards on your deck is that, sometimes, they talk. Their abilities can be changed, and risks can be taken to make them more powerful if certain conditions are met. They’ll let you know how they feel about all this. And then, once you think you’ve seen it all, the game flips on you and takes you places you never even imagined were possible within it.
There’s a folk horror feel to the story that hints at ancient forces being at play. But then the narrative opens up to accommodate even more influences and ideas, making the game reach high levels of inventiveness.
I really want to stress this last point. Inscrytpion is different from top to bottom. The way it turns horror into a puzzle that the player has to discern is impressive. There’s something scary about it, but you have to figure out what the shape of it is (or if it even has a shape to make out).
The cards feature certain creatures and beings that are ripe with personality. The simplest cards feel like they carry a long history behind them. There’s a bear card, for instance, that looks like he’s been on a serious killing streak for some time. Ants and dogs follow suit. They help immerse players in the game because of this. There’s so much meaning behind everything that it’s hard to resist just plowing through it to discover every single secret.
Inscryption is available on all major platforms. It deserves to be experienced. This kind of horror is hard to come by, much less in a playable form.
