Inscryption

Martin Piers Billany, also known as LittleKuriboh, is world-famous for doing an affectionate parody of Yu-Gi-Oh! in which he constantly pointed out the absurdity of using children's card games to save the world from strange billionaires and evil priests from ancient Egypt. The key difference with Inscryption is that this is not a game for children, rather it's a card game made for tiny-itty-bitty little babies (translator's note: this is a TF2 reference).

All the different instances of this game are ridiculously easy and the game constantly throws ways to break the game at you, while also coming up with new gimmicks to break the repetition, but fail to make the game any less simple. The game has influences from many other card games, but at its core it's an extremely simplified version of Hearthstone, which is saying something.

What holds the game together is purely the presentation and the meta-story, which is purposefully cryptic and weird just for the sake of being wacky. The characters are cute and the visuals memorable, but I don't think it comes together at the end, mostly because of the constant visual and progression changes, which break both the flow of the gameplay and the story.

This is a game made for one audience, which is hardcore fans of Game Theory. And while I have enjoyed some of those videos, you cannot make an entire game revolving around trying to bait one guy into making a dozen videos about your silly card game. Especially if the gameplay is so boring and easy that it lacks any meaningful challenge, while the story is too goofy to be taken seriously.

I wish I could go back in time and experience this for the first time again. Very few games make me have this feeling. Third hit in a row by Daniel Mullins.

first act: amazing
later acts: cool
ending: eh

this game is badass. the lore reveals in the ARG and Kaycee's mod kinda retroactively make the story dogshit, but seperated from that this game is an amazing experience from start to finish.i love cards

fun gameplay loop, deep and evolving mechanics and rule set, gripping story, powerful payoff. i don’t want to say more play this game.

To put it simply, it’s a brainier version of card battles games. The roguelite elements initially make the experience quite challenging, but the difficulty drastically drops from the first act onwards. After playing, I wish there was a physical edition available, but I guess it would be hard to keep all the details in mind and buff your cards in real life.

The game is divided into three acts with a few differences in the gameplay. The main dynamics are usually the same, but at times it might feel like playing a whole different game. Still, it’s out of doubt that most of the effort went into the first and final acts. The meta narration also felt surprisingly strong despite relying on a low budget and amateurish live-action footage. The last thirty minutes also feature a lot of material and visual ideas I wish they had fleshed out into a fourth act, if not a separate game.