Inscryption is a 2021 game that combines elements of a deck-building system and a roguelike style. It was created by Daniel Mullins Games and published by Devolver Digital. Directed by Daniel Mullins, the game was first released for Windows on October 19, 2021. It later became available for Linux, macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S over the next two years. The game takes place in a cabin where a mysterious game host forces the player to participate in a tabletop game.
Inscryption combines different types of games, such as deck-building, roguelike, turn-based strategy, escape room, puzzle, and adventure. It draws ideas from tabletop role-playing games, board games, horror, vlogs, and found footage. The game uses a mix of computer animation, pixel art, hand-drawn art, and live-action footage. It also uses first-person, third-person, and 2.5D views. The game starts without any background story or explanation. Players must piece together the cryptic, self-referential story from later events and optional clues. A real-world alternate reality game (ARG) includes additional story details through hidden clues that players must solve.
The game began as a shorter project called Sacrifices Must Be Made, created by Mullins in 2018 for a game development competition called Ludum Dare. This early version used a deck-building system where players had to defeat their own creatures to summon others. After sharing a prototype on the website itch.io in December 2018, Mullins expanded the game significantly, leading to the creation of Inscryption. The game received praise from players and critics when it was released, winning several Game of the Year awards and selling 1 million copies by January 2022. Its unique ideas, card battles, visuals, and story were highlighted as strengths, though some changes in later parts of the game received mixed reactions. A free expansion called Kaycee's Mod was released in March 2022, allowing players to focus on the tabletop game without other elements.
Gameplay
Inscryption is a game where players build a deck of cards and play through different levels. The game is divided into three acts. In each act, the way the card game works changes slightly, but the basic rules for playing the cards remain the same. The card game is played on a grid that starts as 3 rows by 4 columns and becomes 3 rows by 5 columns during the third act. The player places their cards in the bottom row, while the opponent places their cards in the top row. These opponent cards move automatically to the middle row during the next turn. Each card has an attack value and a health value. During a player’s or opponent’s turn, after cards are placed, each card attacks the card in the same column. The attack value is subtracted from the attacked card’s health. If a card’s health drops to zero or less, it is removed. If a card attacks without an opponent in its column, it deals direct damage to the opponent. Damage is shown on a scale using teeth, with each tooth representing one point of damage. The goal is to make the opponent’s side of the scale have five more teeth than the player’s side. Cards also have symbols that represent special abilities, such as the ability to fly past a blocker or attack multiple columns in one turn.
Each card requires a cost to play, and the cost depends on which Scrybe created the card. Cards made by P03 use energy. The player starts with 1 energy at the beginning of each game and gains an extra energy bar each turn. Cards made by Leshy require sacrificing cards already in play. Cards made by Grimora need bone tokens, which are earned by defeating or sacrificing cards. Cards made by Magnificus require one of three gems to be on the board to be played and stay in the game. If a gem leaves the board, the card is lost.
In the first act, Leshy controls the game. The player sees the game from a first-person perspective, facing Leshy in his cabin, though this is not explained to the player. During this act, the game is a roguelike deck-building game. The player starts with a simple deck made only from Leshy’s and Grimora’s cards. The game includes four randomly generated maps with different challenges, such as battles with Leshy and opportunities to add or remove cards from the deck or gain items to help in battles. Each of the first three maps ends with a mini-boss fight, while the final map is a battle with Leshy. If the player loses twice on a map or once during a boss fight, they are turned into a death card by Leshy, which can appear in later games. Between challenges, the player can explore the cabin, solve puzzles, and find clues about the other Scrybes, P03, Grimora, and Magnificus. After defeating Leshy, the game moves to the second act.
In the second act, the game looks like a top-down role-playing game with pixel art, similar to Pokémon. The player chooses one of the four Scrybes to replace and then explores the game world to collect card packs. These packs help expand the player’s deck, which is used to challenge the other Scrybes and their followers in card battles. During this act, cards from all four Scrybes are available, and decks can include cards from any of them. Losing a card battle in this act does not stop the story from progressing. Once the player defeats all four Scrybes, the game moves to the third act.
The third act is similar to the first act and is a roguelike deck-building game. In this act, the player faces P03 in a robot factory, where P03 is trying to take over the game to publish it online. P03 and its followers can use death cards the player may have created in previous games, making battles more difficult. The player moves through a grid-like layout of rooms, similar to The Binding of Isaac. Battles happen between rooms, while other events, such as gaining, improving, or removing cards, take place inside the rooms. Losing a card battle in this act does not restart the game but resets the player to their last checkpoint, which are shown as antenna towers on the map.
Plot
The game is shown as a video recorded by Luke Carder, an online content creator who makes videos about collectible card games under the name "The Lucky Carder." Before the game begins, Carder opens a pack of old, rare cards called Inscryption and finds handwritten coordinates inside. These coordinates point to a location near where he lives. There, he discovers a box buried in the forest that contains a floppy disk labeled Inscryption. The disk is an Inscryption video game, but Carder cannot find any information about it online. When he tries to start the game, he cannot choose to begin a new game and must instead select the "Continue Game" option.
Inside the game, Carder's unnamed character interacts with a mysterious dealer named Leshy in a cabin. They play a card-based tabletop game with Leshy as the gamemaster. Every time Carder's character loses, Leshy uses a magic camera to trap the character's soul into a "death card," and the game restarts with a new character. Between rounds, Carder's character can explore the cabin, solve puzzles, and find three sentient cards: the Stoat, the Stinkbug, and the Stunted Wolf. These cards help Carder's character find a roll of film and defeat Leshy's game. After winning, Carder's character steals the camera, uses the film to trap Leshy in a card, and finds the missing "New Game" button. When Carder selects this option, he can play the Inscryption disk game in its original form.
In its original form, the disk game is very different from what Carder first played, though it still uses a card system similar to the tabletop game. The game is set in a world ruled by four "Scrybes": Leshy, the Scrybe of Beasts; P03, the Scrybe of Technology; Grimora, the Scrybe of the Dead; and Magnificus, the Scrybe of Magicks. P03, Grimora, and Magnificus were previously encountered as the Stoat, the Stinkbug, and the Stunted Wolf, who were trapped in the Leshy-led version of the game and turned into cards. Carder's character arrives in this world to challenge the Scrybes. After defeating all four, they choose one to challenge again, but P03 fights Carder regardless, using a glitch to defeat them and take control of the game.
As Carder becomes more obsessed with the game, he investigates its origins and contacts the publisher of the Inscryption cards, GameFuna. GameFuna denies the game's existence and demands it be returned, sending a representative to reinforce this request. Carder also learns that a GameFuna developer, Kaycee Hobbes, died while working on the game. He notices that his camera is malfunctioning in strange ways.
After P03 takes over the game, it changes again. Carder's character is now trapped in a factory, where P03 acts as the gamemaster in a new tabletop game. The goal is to defeat four "Uberbots" to achieve "The Great Transcendence." P03 uses parts of Carder's computer, like his internet connection and files, in the game. After defeating the last Uberbot, P03 reveals that the game was a plan to upload itself to a digital game store. Before this happens, the other Scrybes stop P03. Grimora then deletes the Inscryption disk, believing this is the best choice. As the disk is wiped, each Scrybe battles Carder one last time. Finally, Carder faces Leshy again, who thanks him for a good game. Magnificus battles Carder as the game collapses.
Despite warnings from the game's characters, Carder opens an in-game ZIP file called "OLD_DATA." After seeing its contents, he panics and smashes the disk with a hammer. He contacts a journalist to explain his story and claim that OLD_DATA would expose wrongdoing by GameFuna. Before he can finish, a GameFuna representative shoots him and takes the disk.
The alternate reality game (ARG) adds more details to the story through hidden clues. These clues led fans to receive real floppy disks by mail after finding a website by solving the ARG's puzzles. The ARG reveals that Kaycee Hobbes discovered the "Karnoffel Code," an algorithm linked to the Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler. A spy named Barry Wilkinson hid the code on a floppy disk, which later became part of the Inscryption game. The ARG also connects Inscryption to Mullins' previous game, The Hex, with characters from The Hex helping P03 or GameFuna.
The ARG's clues lead to a short live-action video that acts as an epilogue. It shows Carder hitting the Inscryption disk with a hammer, then his computer turning on and completing P03's upload. The video ends with an ASCII image of P03 winking, suggesting that P03 survived the disk's deletion by uploading itself to Carder's computer and succeeded in spreading the game worldwide. This implies that the real-life version of Inscryption available online was P03's version all along.
Development
The game began as a small project that Daniel Mullins created during the Ludum Dare 43 game jam in 2018. The theme of the jam was "sacrifices must be made." At that time, Mullins was playing Magic: The Gathering again and used the game's sacrifice mechanic as inspiration. He designed the game so that players could sacrifice creatures to play others. This idea also included players sacrificing parts of their own bodies, such as an eye, which would limit their field of view and cause negative effects. Mullins named his game "Sacrifices Must Be Made" to match the jam's theme. After the jam, he released the game for free on itch.io on December 31, 2018. The game gained attention from players. Because he had just finished releasing The Hex, Mullins decided to expand Sacrifices Must Be Made into a full game. At first, he thought of making it part of a collection of stories, but later he developed ideas for a larger game. This led him to expand the base game in multiple directions, including adding full-motion video.
Leshy is based on a creature of the same name from Slavic mythology. Mullins thought the dealer might be a type of "forest demon." While searching online, he learned about the Leshy myth, which he felt fit the game's horror theme. This inspired the creation of the other three Scrybes, whom Mullins compared to Pokémon gym leaders. Each Scrybe has a different theme: Leshy is connected to beasts, while the others are linked to robots (P03), wizards (Magnificus), and the undead (Grimora). Mullins noted that the game focuses mostly on Leshy and P03's stories. He felt including more acts about Grimora or Magnificus would have made the game too long. However, Grimora plays a key role in the game's ending.
Daniel Mullins Games released a free update in December 2021 that included a beta version of a mini-expansion called "Kaycee's Mod." In this mode, players can play the roguelike deck-building game from Act I endlessly. They can unlock new cards and abilities to face more difficult challenges. The mini-expansion was officially released on March 17, 2022.
Reception
Inscryption received "generally favorable" reviews according to the Metacritic website.
Rock Paper Shotgun praised the game's scale mechanic, stating, "You lose and gain momentum, deliver powerful attacks, and recover from near-losses by being aggressive. It is an interesting change." Destructoid appreciated the game's art style and horror elements but noted that later chapters changed gameplay in ways that did not hold as much interest as the first chapter. PC Gamer's Jody Macgregor enjoyed the game's early sections, describing the world as "off-kilter and grotesque," but said the later parts lost their mysterious and eerie feel. Eurogamer liked the game's visuals, calling them "a cursed version of something from the 1990s: a low-quality adventure that feels twisted by evil."
Inscryption was nominated for Best Indie Game and Best Sim/Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2021. Polygon named it their best game of 2021, while Time and Ars Technica included it in their lists of best games of 2021. At the 2021 Steam Awards, it was nominated for Most Innovative Gameplay. During the 25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards, it was nominated for "Game of the Year," "Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year," and for outstanding achievements in "Independent Game," "Game Design," "Game Direction," and "Story." Inscryption won Game of the Year at the 22nd Game Developers Choice Awards and the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2022 Independent Games Festival. It also received Excellence in Design, Narrative, and Audio awards. This was the first time a game won both top prizes at these events. Inscryption was also nominated for the Innovation Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.
By January 2022, the game had sold more than one million copies.
Fans of the game have created physical copies of parts of Inscryption.