It opens waaaay up

I've gotten to the second (or maybe technically third) shift, and I'm not digging it nearly as much as the original motif. I'm still curious where it's heading though, so I do plan to keep going.

Y'all wanna just rename this to an Inscryption spoilers thread, because just starting a thread to say "later, the game does indeed do a weird thing" isn't much to add onto.

Having just finished the game, I will say that while I was initially put off by the thing that happens, I came around on it, and really loved my time with this product. That said, I would also have been extremely happy with a game that is just the first act done bigger.

I get the complaints regarding the rest of the game, but I don't think I would've wanted too much more of just Act 1. It's wildly inventive and fun but the rule-breaking means it's not necessarily a card game you need to repeat for hundreds of hours because it's so easy solvable. Slay the Spire isn't what it was meant to be.

For me, that middle section didn't last more than 90 minutes, and I found it pretty straightforward once I settled on a core of a deck that I liked. I don't love tinkering with decks that much so I only modified it very slightly as Act 2 went on.

The game got back to most of the highs of Act 1 after though 2 concluded. If I had to make any complaints, I'd say I wish the puzzle solves were a little better there though.

Bumping this thread because I feel like I’m missing something with this game. I’ve played about 10 hours and am kind of losing interest. So far it is a pretty bland deck builder roguelike. I’m kind of in a grind of playing through the first two biomes, losing on the third, repeat.

Obviously from all the talk about it SOMETHING happens but I’m obviously missing it and losing patience with the grind.

What have you unlocked in The Cabin? Have you gotten the safe open? Have you drawn the Useless Thing as an item in the card game? Did you do all the tile puzzles on the cabinet? How's that dagger, still being held by a squirrel or...? What's giving you trouble in the third biome?

I'm not trying to sound like a dick, I'm just trying not to spoil stuff.

@undeadpool: Finally got back to this and made progress. You gave me the nudge I needed so thank you.

Spoilers...

So I was close, and the literal key was underneath my noise. I had found the useless thing, I have gotten the ring just by brute-forcing the clock, and I had unlocked the safe. What I missed though was that there were two items in the safe. I took the card, but didn't see the key sitting there. I have partial vision so this is a common problem for me. Sometimes I just don't see things. I wish more games would offer the option to highlight objects in the environment, but that's my own personal problem.

So the key was literally the key to unlocking the rest of the cabin. I got the dagger and the eye and the film, and ended up going all the way through all 4 rounds of the game and moving on to the next stage.

Some thoughts on the "game" (at least the first stage that is immediately available). I think it is intentionally unfair and designed to be broken. I stumbled onto what seemed like an incredibly game-breaking totem early in my run of rodent/revive. (or however they word it) That combination meant that all of my squirrels revived, and made summoning high-level blood characters simple. I steamrolled through the first three acts easily summoning 3-and-4 blood cards. The first two rounds of the final boss were still fairly easy as I was able to counter all of his actions. The final round though is so incredibly unfair that I don't see how you beat this stage unless you've found some sort of exploit like the one I found. I was at the point where I was just running out of cards, while having about 20 squirrels in my hand, but did mange to pull it out.

The FMV was unexpected. As someone who did computer support in the 90s I can tell you there is NO WAY that floppy disk could have survived buried with the door open. None.

So now I'm onto the CRPG part...

That's great to hear, @dwmc! Hopeful it is interesting enough to push you through the rest of the game. In comparison to Act 1, the rest of it is more straightforward and I feel is more about the card game. But don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the story it tells.

@dwmc: (Spoiler blocks more for others in the thread, I'm not telling you much you wouldn't already know plot-wise. Have fun with the CRPG part, as Rob and Natalie learnt over on Waypoint: it might not be what you expect) Great job! Yeah, I can imagine this game not being SUPER friendly to people with visual impairment (simulated or real). I think Stoat has a line of dialog that complains that Leshy doesn't play fair, breaking the mechanics and introducing new ones at will, which I think is a hint to the player to try and break the game too.

Cause it is EASILY breakable, the bifurcate/trifurcate strikes can do ludicrous damage, the "final boss" can be one-hitted via Deathtouch (or rendered completely impotent by a single "stinky" card) and while my breaking of it wasn't the same, it was similar: I got a 3 blood squirrel token, meaning all my squirrels counted for 3. I could fill my row with sharks and bears for the same price as bullfrogs.

There's so much more oddness too: you can feed the Survivors certain things to kill them, if you use the Goat Eye, then the Black Goat card changes, the Ouroborus is DESIGNED to shatter the game. It's surprisingly replayable if you like little strange details over story (cause the story's completely linear).

And maybe there was no chance that disc would survive...but what about the old data? The oldest data? The... OLD_DATA?

Finally finished it. I liked the game by the end of it, but some of the experience was definitely soured by me just being bad at card games and being stuck in the first Act for ages. It also didn’t help (for personal reasons) that even after things change up, you’re still playing with cards until the very end, even if the rules change every now and then.

I’m also of two minds about everything ”weird” that happens in the game. There’s been a good handful of indie titles doing something strange for years now, so none of the stuff in Inscryption made me have a ”NO WAY, WHAT?!” reaction to it, even though there definitely were cool moments sprinkled throughout. Admittedly I also knew well beforehand that the game does something weird, so who knows how I would have felt if I had just picked it up as a cool looking card game to play…actually, I do know. I likely wouldn’t have picked it up at all, because I don’t like card games. So it actually probably was good that I knew something would happen, cause it kept me playing, I guess?

TLDR: It’s a cool game with some tricks that I felt like I had seen before and it’s probably also going to be the only card game ever that I put multiple hours into.

Finally finished after taking a month-long break midway through Botopia. On the whole I loved it, though I thought it was maybe an hour or two too long. I also join the chorus of people thinking that the first act is far and away the best part and I regret that I stumbled into a gamebreaking combo about three hours in and blazed through Act 1 way too quickly.

The ending was great and surprisingly affecting until the last 30ish seconds with Luke getting shot in the head. I'm generally all for nihilistic "no closure" types of endings but with the amount of mystery the game had weaved up until that point it was pretty unsatisfying and I don't think an ARG providing more context really makes up for it.

On a side note, Inscryption finally made me get around to playing Pony Island which kicks ass. Absolutely loved that little weirdo.

Just finished this game. Lots of spoilers ahead that I'm not going to bother to tag....

I did feel like act 2 dragged a bit, and maybe just wasn't quite my thing, but act 3 made up for it. I really enjoyed all of the mechanics that the game kept introducing in act 3. Act 2 I initially found very frustrating until I just started having the game autogenerate a deck, which almost always ended up being better than any deck I built manually.

Act 3 was fun an challenging and overall less punishing than the 1st. Losing in act 3 generally only put you back 1 or at most 2 battles, where losing in act 1 was brutal if you were nearing the end of the run.

I'm curious how much player choice changes the way the game progresses, ie what is the consequence of your choice of who to replace at the end of act 2? It just so happened that I chose to replace Po3, and then went onto Botopia, but what would have happened if I had picked any of the other 3?

I don't think there's enough incentive to replay to find out, but it does seem like there could be a lot more there to find.

I absolutely DEVOURED this game over the weekend and thought it was quite great for what it is. It's an eerie game with a narrative that sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if your personality is wired a certain way. I'm probably in agreement with everyone else in thinking act 1 is the strongest and most compelling part but I also kind of the love the broader narrative picture the other acts do to bring it all together.

@mezmero: The ending felt VERY, VERY film student to me (wow, guy gets shot in the head while the camera keeps rolling, very edgy, very grimdark), but I looked into it more, and without spoiling anything: apparently it actually ties into the previous Mullins game "The Hex" and is a continuation of the overarching story for that. Which actually makes me view it more favorably, but I wish it was less "hidden in a few frames."

Spoiler for Act 2: if you pick any of the others, P03 intercepts the power and takes it for itself, still leading to "Botopia."

@mezmero: That is a great interpretation of the game's message or meta narrative that I haven't seen before. No idea if that was the dev's intent, but I see how you get that from it.

@undeadpool:I noted elsewhere when the Nextlander guys were discussing Inscryption for GOTY that not playing The Hex (and to a lesser extent, Pony Island) is a big gap in a lot of game coverage, particularly at Giantbomb and adjacent outlets. VB has played it on her streams, but hasn't finished Inscryption, but I'm pretty sure she's the only one who is even aware The Hex existed.

Particularly with regard to: Act 1 signposting "SHITS ABOUT TO GET FUCKED UP YO! ONCE YOU DO THIS ONE THING..." well before you are able to do anything to make shit fucked up. And also excessive criticism for the ending/weird hidden stuff at the end of Inscryption, most of which is entirely explained by "It's the sequel to The Hex."

@undeadpool: Well yeah, the thing I immediately thought of after seeing it was the original cut ending of Clerks.

@bladeofcreation: Hey thanks! Overthinking artistic intent is one of my favorite parts of this hobby.

@mezmero:The original ending of Clerks is a PERFECT touchstone for that ending, especially because Smith has said he didn't really do it for any reason other than pure shock value and he had no idea how else to end it. This felt like that, but apparently if you freezeframe, you'll see a cartoon face over the woman's, and it's a character from the previous game Mullins put out. So unless I'm mistaken, this is a canonical sequel, but I haven't started "The Hex" yet, so I have no idea how it hangs together.

@magnetphonics:I'm not cool enough to know who "VB" is, but I've adored all the coverage of this game I've seen so far (Waypoint's playthrough of it is a TRULY strange case of being genuinely invested in, and incredibly entertained by, something I find very frustrating to watch. Also Nextlander has been all over Inscryption praise, and it's been lovely to hear, even though I don't think they're familiar with The Hex either) so I'd love to be hipped to her.