That’s Good, That’s Bad: Inscryption

Hello, and welcome to the third instalment of a series that I’m calling That’s Good, That’s Bad, based on a joke in the Simpsons in which Homer buys a cursed Krusty doll from what I now see as a pretty racist stereotype of an asian person. The gag is still good though, good enough for me to form a sort of review process in which I alternate between saying something good about a game, then something bad about it. This time my game of choice is Daniel Mullins’ deck builder Inscryption.

Major spoilers ahead by the way, so if you're going to play Inscryption, do so before reading this!

I made a card with a robot that has a gun called Dr. Help You on it…that’s good.

As you unwind the ball of tangled jewellery that is this game, you’ll discover that it’s more than just about playing a card game in a dank cabin against someone who sounds like a low-pitched klaxon. Your adventures will see you journey into a retro 16-bit top-down world to challenge the four Scrybes and prove your mastery of a children’s card game, and eventually you’ll find yourself in a high-tech dungeon crawl against a DM who is about as good at coming up with names as they are as good at not being a complete asshole. There’s plenty of fun and interesting ways Inscryption puts several dents into the 4th wall without it ever undermining itself, which is quite the balancing act.

The live-action parts have a university film student vibe about them...that’s bad.

There is one exception to that 4th wall breaking that I did not much care for, however, which is when the game pulls all the way back to reveal that you’re playing as some guy called Luke Carder (I assume that the name Derick Deck-builder had already been taken). What gets my knickers in a twist about these sections is that they are just so tedious to get through, and they aren’t particularly well acted either. By the time I was pulled away from the part of the game I was actually invested in for a third time, I was seriously thinking about skipping the whole section just so I could start playing again.

The true Inscryption starts at Kaycee’s Mod…that’s good.

Far from being a game with a couple of neat gimmicks, Inscryption actually has an addictive card game nestled at its centre. And fortunately, once you've complete the story you get access to Kaycee’s Mode, which allows you to play Leshy’s version of the game as much as you like. Featuring new cards to collect, new challenges to tackle and even a secret boss, means that I’ll will be dipping back into Inscryption now and again to complete another run. No matter how good a story is in a video game, sometimes you just want the pure, unadulterated gameplay without having to skip through dialogue informing you that your deck composition sucks.

But there’s no Kaycee’s Mod of the P03 section…that’s bad.

As I mentioned before, the final act of Inscryption has you trapped playing the dungeon-crawler edition of the game, and it is quite possibly my favourite part. So it’s a shame that it doesn’t receive a Kaycee's Mod version like its Leshy counterpart. It would have been a treat to go back and amass new cards, face harder challenges and defeat its very own super hidden boss. I understand that perhaps Daniel couldn’t commit the resources for all of that, but still, I can dream…I can dream.

Disturbing, funny and heartfelt: Inscryption has got it all…that’s good.

What impressed me about the story is how effortlessly it can switch gears from a comedic Yu-Gi-Oh reference into a character’s frantic final moments before they are wiped from existence, and not have either part devalue the other. Inscryption for the most part is a dark and gruesome game, as evidenced when you use pliers to perform some impromptu dental work, but that doesn’t mean it won’t make you laugh or even feel a little sorry for the denizens of its world. Daniel Mullins has a great ability to blend several tones together without the result becoming horribly jarring mess.

The puzzles are a little inconsistent…that’s bad.

What do you want the puzzles to be Daniel? Do you want them to be fun little diversions to vary up the gameplay or do you want them to tie down the brain and punch it repeatedly in the frontal lobe. Inscryption can never to seem to make up its mind, with puzzles that are so easy they almost seem like an intentional joke, to puzzles that had me floundering around like a fish asked to explain the inner workings of the hadron collider. Some of the simplest ones sat only a mere few steps away from the most complex, which probably caused me the most puzzlement of all.

An ending about knowing when to say goodbye…that’s good.

When the world of Inscryption slowly gets deleted byte by byte, you are left playing cards as usual with the three remaining Scrybes, and it’s a wonderful moment as you see them deal with the eventual end. Even Leshy, who had been nothing but a tormenter to the player shows a glimmer of humanity, as he laments about not being able to play with you longer, admitting that your presence gave him a sense of fulfilment. But it’s Magnificus who comes across as the most tragically desperate figure, as he tries to play on in spite of the world falling apart. His last action to shake the player’s hand is ultimately unsuccessful as he disappears forever.

It doesn’t know when to stop digging the rabbit hole…that’s bad.

That’s kind of the thing about these games, there always needs to be another layer to be uncovered. The final layer of Inscryption is the resolution of those live-action scenes with Luke, and it turns out that the floppy disk contains something bad. As to what that bad actually is, who knows? It’s something that I suspect the game wants fans to piece together, but to be honest I couldn’t care less what it is. I got my ending when Inscryption was deleted, not when a game company sends someone to kill a card-obsessed influencer because of something I can’t be bothered to find out.

So is Inscryption good or bad?

When making something as experimental as this game, the higher the chance an element will prove irksome. Yet, this is a gamble that absolutely pays off with Inscryption, with constant (and usually delightful) surprises keeping me enthralled. And in the end, all the gimmicks are backed-up by a very good card game.

@purpleshyguy:

This was the biggest single negative for me. I liked the story of the game as far as it went. As you point out, you even feel a kind of sympathy for Leshy and the other Scrybes.

But if I want the "real" ending I gotta play an ARG? No thank you. Especially since the ARG has long since been solved by die-hard fans, so you're as likely as not to just accidentally find the answers via google.

My scorching hot take is that Inscryption was neat, and fun. But to be truly mind-blowing, it should have come out ten or fifteen years ago. It's like Undertale by way of Eternal Darkness.

A lot of the "ARG" stuff people talk about is just callbacks to previous games in the series and placing it in the overarching narrative. I can't imagine any other sequel getting the weird deliberately out-of-context coverage that Inscryption has, "Oh yeah I love Uncharted 4, but it keeps referring to this thing called 'Uncharted 3' and I have no idea what it could be and they don't explain it. I shouldn't have to do these weird ARGs to understand the story."

@el_blarfo:On the one hand, I like that he put in weird little references to previous games and tried to tie the live-action stuff into the larger universe he's building of malevolent code invading the real world, it's very good idea from "Snow Crash"/ one of the only good ideas in "The Matrix" sequels.

On the other hand: having to go online to find out there's a single-frame that actually makes the live-action stuff pay off isn't exactly the way to ingratiate new viewers or even sell more copies of those previous games to get people more invested.

There's a lot of potential in this weird collection of subversive games, but if it becomes too insular, it's going to be less "Undertale" and more "the gatekeepery parts of Star Wars fandom."

Exactly! For reference, see the comment immediately preceding yours.

Plus-- the whole notion that there is an interconnected Mullins-verse is news to me, and that's after putting 15-ish hours into the game. There's a fine line between leaving cool Easter eggs for your fans, and expecting newcomers to magically have knowledge of all your previous work.

Anyway, to reiterate: The game was cool, as far as it went. I think it would have been cooler if it stood on it's own. I don't care for ARG's in general, because I don't like a game that gives me homework. I'm fucking BUSY, man!

ok, so I don't want to be spoilered, so I just hopped into the comment section 😅
would you dudes recommend this game? since I've heard quite a bit about inscryption, and many would say it's good...

should I get this game? XD

For what it's worth, I highly enjoyed it, all the twists and turns and bizarre reveals, and I didn't do one single thing with the ARG. I see ARGs and I'm like, oh cool, they put an ARG in for those people. That's neat. Anyway. And I move on with my life. Well worth a buy IMO. It's a very cool fusion of genres, with awesome art and style.

@armoredmachine: If you're looking for a great card game, Inscryption is certainly worth playing, and the amount of ways the game plays around with its mechanics is extremely interesting. The story for me was a little divisive, there were some parts I really liked and some parts I really didn't, but like I said, the core gameplay is very engaging.