Episode 132 - Past in Games - Inscryption

It’s been so long since I’ve had a podcast. Welcome back to the podcast! Today we’re going to be talking about Inscryption, and, before moving on I have to say that I will be crucified for writing anything about Inscryption online that people who haven’t played it can see with their virgin eyes and ruin the experience for themselves. So note that this is one of those kinds of games and proceed with caution if you really don’t want to know anything about it, though I’m going to stay as spoiler free as possible in this description. With that out of the way, Inscryption is a… card game. It’s a game with some twists and maybe even a few turns, but at its mechanical heart it is a deck building card game, and a genuinely good one at that. The game is easy to pick up and understand with a level of mechanical depth that can be imposing at times later in the game, and it meshes thematically with the world the game creates exceedingly well. In fact, a lot of what aids in the grokability of the game is how well it fits within the fiction, sparking curiosity in the player and letting that naturally turn into an investigation of the mechanics. Beyond that, it’s hard to talk about this game’s tone without spoiling some of it, but I’ll say that it does remain interesting throughout and is one of the best things about the game. It pulls off “creepy” better than most traditional horror games do and packs an alarming amount of detail into even its smallest environments. The rest I’ll leave to you to find out for yourself. We’re going to be talking about how figuring this game out while not knowing anything at the outset is more enjoyable than most, the card game mechanics and what they do right and when they get complicated, and we fail to make a poop joke which should come as a big relief to everyone. Thank you for joining us and also for putting up with that vague description! We really liked this game, for the record, so if you’re on the fence about it and our opinion means anything we’d try pushing you in its direction. If you’ve played it, how much did you know about it before going in? Did you find it mysterious and cool? Are you a card game player and did you pick up on all the references and clap your hands or roll your eyes at them? Let us know in the comments or over on Discord! We’re taking a pretty big jump in the style of game we’re talking about next time, and covering Tina Tina’s Wonderland, the Borderland’s spinoff based around fantasy and D&D, which is apparently pretty hot right now, so we hope you’ll join us for that!