Inscryption analysis

Making an incredible creepypasta of a card game, Inscryption is the epitome in a particular way of understanding video games.

You are in a lost cabin in the middle of the forest. Outside, the noise of the storm and the night does not presage anything good, not inside the same. Do not even bother trying to remember how you ended up there, why are you in that place, because you know that your memory could not work in a place like this; Not before those glazed eyes, those beards like algae, that skin like wood. The presence of that man, great, sullen, not unfriendly in the features of him, but herself disturbing, makes you shudder. Maybe it s lighting, scarce. Maybe it s the atmosphere, loaded. But what if you are sure is that, somehow, it is impossible for you to leave here I live.

Basic information

Developer: Daniel Mullins Games Editor: Return digital Platforms: PC Proven version: PC Availability: 10/19/2021

That is perhaps the only undeniable of inscryption - the new game of Daniel Mullins, the creator of The Hex and Pony Island -, which communicates better through the literature that of criticism. Not because there are no things to break, that there are, and with a generosity that could not end up in a criticism, an article, or a series of them, but because, to do so, it takes something more than what its owner does . To end inscrryption, unlike that to end us, it is not enough only with a photo. It is necessary a deep, almost disturbing, adjoining dissection with autopsy.

Everything else we can say about inscryption is pregnant with organs. None of them negative. All the but inscrryption have to do with their inexhaustibility. Conque nothing is what it seems in it. Or not only what it seems. But that does not mean that we can not speak at all of insrryption.

Inscryption is a derogelike deck creation. Inspired by Slay The Spire, but drinking from Magic s mechanics: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Hearthstone, among many other references inside and out of collection card games, we embodiment a poor person locked in a cabin who has to play a sinister game with a no less sinister subject that threatens to kill us if we lose the game of Your twisted board game. A board game that, as we pointed, drink a lot from Slay the Spire: We are moving down a board, being able to find different events - get different letters, be able to improve those we already have, get objects to use during encounters, or confrontations of several Classes -, until you reach Final Boss of each map, which, making use of special rules, will test our ability to build decks and play them.

Because, as we said, insrtyption baby from the CCG, or collection card games. Where Slay The Spire focuses part of the cards in the construction of decks, Inscryption understands its mechanics as a confrontation against a human rival. Or something similar enough to the human as for the confrontation to be felt; our rivals, who are always the same rival incarnate different characters, putting masks and imposting different voices to pretend to be as if it were the master of an elaborate (and sinister) split of role, they have the same pool of letters that we have The same glyphs (keywords, in the jargon of the game), adding an essential factor in any competitive card set: symmetry. Because, and that is the big difference of inscrryption with respect to Slay the Spire, it is competitive: we face another person, virtual, but person. And consequently, the most natural place to drink is, then, the CCG that we have already named.

In fact, Inscryption, as a set of cards, can only be defined as absolutely bright. In the playable, Inscryption gives us two decks, our own and other only with basic creatures that can not attack, giving us four letters at the beginning of each hand without the possibility of replacing them, where there will always be one of those basic creatures and three letters of our mallet. From there we will have to place one or more creatures at the table, divided into four spaces horizontally, with eight other spaces facing two lines of four. In the first row our creatures go, in the second creatures of the rival and in the third row they show the letters that the rival will play on the next shift. Our creatures do so much damage as an attack have, they can receive as much damage and life have, they only attack our turn, if they do not have another front letter hurt directly to the rival, and if they have a creature, they do it to the creature instead of The rival. Win the first thing to get five points of damage to the rival more than those he has received.

These are the basic rules of the game ... at least if we obviate all the disturbing elements that make inscriptionption an exceptional game. To represent how the game is going there is a balance where gold teeth are placed to discern who is winning. Among the objects we can get there are pincers that allow us to tear us one of our own teeth to tilt the scale on our behalf. And if that is not disturbing enough in itself, it is necessary to talk about how the letters are literally made of living beings.

In terms of mana management, Inscryption defines the value of all our blood and bones cards. What does that mean? That the cost for playing them is defined in the sacrifices we make. If a letter costs one of blood, we will have to sacrifice another letter to play it. If a letter costs two bones, we will need to have previously sacrificed two letters to play it. In this way, the management of resources, the mana, is defined by the cards themselves we have. Our second deck of basic creatures is not just a way to fill the table, but also a way to play our cards. Our adorable bunnies go to the innocent table only to be devoured by a wolf that demands at least two of their lives, which they themselves are aware, as we can see how they get tremble when, in our turn, we take the Wolf card. On the other hand, it is not as if the wolf will not tremble in the same way when we take any letter that requires sacrifices as soon as he has touched the table. In Inscryption the value of everything, also that of blood, bones, teeth and other organs, is defined by its ability to make us win.

Mullins thus solve the basic problem of Magic: The Gathering: Mana s management. We always have access to the most basic resources (a drop of blood, a bone), but at the cost of not being able to steal more powerful letters, either in direct value (greater presence at a table) or in indirect value (granting more resources) . Because that is the Inscryption key: everything is like that until it stops being it.

In the basics it is easy to understand why. There are glyphs, keywords, which change our letters behave. If a letter is suinstuous it makes the letter in front of you, if you have a flight attack directly to the rival without being able to be blocked in exchange for not being able to hurt the rival even if it does suffer it, and if it is aquatic you can attack the rival , But when his turn comes, he hides underwater, letting him attack directly. There are also the objects, which give us immediate benefits, such as the aforementioned pincers, to add an extra tooth on the balance, the fan, to convert all our cards into flying by a turn, or the bottles, which contain specific letters for Be able to add them in our hand when we want. Something that can remind the potions of Slay The Spire but that, unlike those, require much more liberal use both by the relative frequency of its appearance and by the difficulty of the meetings.

Because in addition, if in the basics it is easy to understand, Inscryption is much more than it appears. The rules of the game, once we have interned them after the first hours, begin to change significantly, sometimes forever, sometimes for a limited time. Different meetings add different rules and different maps include, even new pool card. In addition, every time we die, we have to start from the beginning, but with an added advantage: to our death, we can design a new letter by choosing the values ​​from the letters we had in our deck, which will be added to the total of Letters available. This makes the progression never pond, since these letters will always tend to be more powerful in each Run that we do.

In spite of everything, inscribition is a game of cards does not mean that it is limited to them. As we said in the first paragraph, our character is at night in a cabin in the middle of a forest, and the game plays with that. At any time we are not inside the game we can get up from the table and observe everything in the cabin. Full of puzzles, some that we will have to resolve within the cards of cards, each element, every detail, by absurdity that seems, gives us advantages in the games and also, makes the narrative of the game advance. One that is, at all times, constantly evolution.

This may be the element that will generate the most confusion. Inscryption has history. It has a narrative. In the aesthetic and the narrative is a creepypasta, in the structural story is a more classical story, more elaborate, than the classic (and charming) amateurism of creepypasta, the horror stories circulating over the Internet about real events that the person who narrates He says he has experienced. In this way, combining environmental narrative with certain leaves more explicit, especially when we have already advanced a significant portion of the game, Inscryption shapes an oppressive and terrifying environment, at the same time telling a story that could not be counted in the same way , not so effectively, in any other means.

Because, at the end of the day, Inscryption is a creepypasta. A story of terror, a game of terror, which only makes sense here and now, in the form of a video game. That is why, in a certain sense, Inscryption is the epitome of an entire intersection of Internet culture, that of creepypasta, of card games and roguelikes , but also of the aesthetic geocities and the video games of the nineties, both PC as consoles, both desktop and portable, perfectly summarized in a title that drinks from all of them, homage, but also their own. The cannibaliza in favor of their own benefit, creating an amalgam that is not a mere sum of its parts, but something else. A game with its own sense. A master class and narrative class that, every time you think it is already close to running out, finds a new vein with which to show that this game only makes sense because you are playing it. That its design is only ends in the fact that you are on the other side of the screen.

Maybe it s lighting, scarce. Maybe it s the atmosphere, loaded. But what if you should be sure is that, somehow, inscryption is made of the material with which the classics are forged.