The game at the table is a
deckbuilder, lessSlaythe Spire and
more like the singleplayer mode of a
CCG – a Hearthstone solo adventure
with a wilderness Americana theme,
all rattlesnakes and yeehaw. I collect
a deck of animal friends, bullfrogs
and wolf cubs with familiar stats and
thematic abilities. The
skunk smells so bad
enemies have their
power reduced, the
beaver builds defensive
dams, and so on.
The mechanics of
this card game are
wilfully off-kilter and
grotesque. Most cards
have a blood cost, which has to be
paid by sacrificing other cards.
(Which is why I’ve got a separate
deck of squirrels – free cards worth
one blood each.) Rather than being
measured in hit points, damage
against my opponent and I is counted
in teeth, which fall into a pair of
scales. I need to get ahead by five
teeth to tip the scales and win each
round. There’s an item on the table
that promises to help me tip the
scales. It’s a pair of pliers.
My opponent isn’t a simulation of
another player and doesn’t play by
the same rules. He’s
more a Dungeon
Master, or the Dealer
fromHandof Fate,
narrating encounters
and putting on masks
to portray NPCs as I
cross a map. “Thar’s
gold in them cards!” he
hollers as the
prospector, whose pickaxe
transforms cards into rocks. Then he
takes off the mask and sets up minis
around a campfire to play out a scene
with suspicious, starving travellers
who offer to warm one of my beasts
by their fire. He may be a murderous
kidnapper, but he puts in so much
effort I kind of respect him.
I spent hours inThe Elder Scrolls:
Legends playing singleplayer battles
with fun twists: a siege dropped a
stone wall across the middle of the
table, a storm-tossed pirate ship slid
cards back and forth. The twists in
Inscryption are just as novel. Every
wolf card gains the ability to fly; a
hook drags my cards across the board
and turns them against me.
There’s another twist, however.
Inscryption is the work of Daniel
Mullins Games, who madePony
Island(in which the Devil forces you
to play a buggy auto-runner), and The
Hex (in which videogame characters
re-live flashbacks to different genres
they’ve been in). Like those games,
Inscryption changes as you play,
revealing so many layers that if it was
a cake, Paul Hollywood would shake
someone’s hand.
To discuss those layers, I’ll need to
spoil them even more than I have just
by acknowledging they exist.
Spoiler-averse? Skip to the verdict.
TRAPCARD
The second act of Inscryption is a 2D
pixel-art RPG in the style of the
T
his is a card game with a villain. This shadowy figure, all
staring eyes and long fingers, waits at the table for our game
to start. I’m trapped in a cabin and have to play, under pain of
death, though I can get up and stretch my legs. There are
shelves of trinkets on the walls: a skull, a safe, a clock. They
present puzzles to solve as part of the larger puzzle: how do I get out?
DIE CARD
INSCRYPTION is a disconcerting, multi-layeredcardgame
ByJodyMacgregor
The mechanics
of this card
gameare
wilfully
off-kilter
What I reallyneedis
Flames of Wrath, or my
Broadsword.
ABOVE: Ask not for whom the clock cuckoos.
NEED TO KNOW
WHATIS IT?
Part deckbuilder, part
puzzle room, part
nightmare
EXPECT TO PAY
£15
DEVELOPER
Daniel Mullins Games
PUBLISHER
Devolver Digital
REVIEWED ON
Windows 10, Intel Core
i7, 16GB RAM, Nvidia
GTX 1060
MULTIPLAYER
No
LINK
inscryption-game.com
Inscryption
REVIEW