Leshy's philosophy for his own card game is quite novel to me. He creates situations that apparently are in his favor, at least to an inexperienced player, for he begins his turn, more often than not, with a few cards already deployed. Truth is that we’re playing a puzzle in disguise more than a match of wits that's supposed to be balanced. The solution to such a puzzle is breaking the game by combining the various tools at your disposal to demolish your opponent in an unforgiving fashion.

Inscryption in the first act is a terribly unbalanced card game, where the scale is at all times tipped, but a breath of fresh air as far as puzzle games are concerned. Its rogue-like features are the cherry on top, as getting how to solve the puzzle becomes this gradual process that never becomes stale: there were never impasses. Each restart in my experience truly felt like I was closer to beating the dealer at its own game, with his own set of rules. And when I did, it was truly rewarding.

The horror atmosphere settles in from the start, all thanks to an immaculate art direction and as much refined sound design. Not only that, but the rogue-like aspects create tense situations, especially in earlier stages of the game.

When I discovered the game wanted to indulge in its narrative I was a bit concerned it would turn out to be kind of mediocre, and, spoilers, it did. This game is often misinterpreted as "meta". Thing is, the only meta thing in the game is giving access to your own computer's files; the rest is, to put it bluntly, a story, witnessed by an unknown onlooker, about a person that came across a self-aware game. The narrative without its meta flair is barebones and belongs to a creepypasta forum.

Sadly, the card game stops being a puzzle game in disguise at the start of the second act, in which it becomes a regular, bloated, unbalanced card game, in which all rogue-like features are dropped. It makes sense from a narrative standpoint, as we finally managed to disrupt Leshy's control over the game, and gone with him was his much-praised game philosophy.

I have to say, while unfortunately that narrative didn't amount to anything special, I truly appreciate a game artist that doesn't only back the winning horse and instead tries to win elegantly by making potentially detrimental choices.

The third act tries to reinvent the first but with a new dealer. That, but the entire point of that third act is to be lifeless and streamlined. This part overstays its welcome and apart from a pair of charming bosses whose gimmicks were quite fun I felt like it was a lesser version of the first game. I don't dislike it, far from it, the art direction is solid and a nice change of pace. What I really appreciate is that each Scrybe has his own idea of what Inscryption is meant to be. When I talk about the Scrybes' game philosophy, for once it isn't some abstract interpretation, but instead their own words. I find them very readable and intriguing characters. For this reason, I would have loved extended versions of the ending games against Grimora and Magnificus, and less of what PO3 was trying to achieve, so that these characters could have been more fleshed out.

In the end, Inscryption makes me happy, because it means that there are game directors that aren't Kojima out there willing to make high-quality, risky, and out-of-the-box games for the sake of artistic expression.

My overriding feeling with Inscryption is that it ended up being a bit less than the sum of its parts. Knowing it's a roguelike adventure deckbuilder where all is not as it seems I was expecting this to be one of my favourite games ever, but I found myself underwhelmed.

I was quickly drawn in to the world, in love with the macabre atmosphere and all the little gruesome details. After a couple of hours, though, I found myself struggling. Small strategic mistakes or RNG misfortune meant I had to retry a bunch of times even after my second win, but the mechanics were a little too shallow for it to stay interesting. It became clear why later on, when those mechanics were thrown away and then adapted for a less interesting (but still enjoyable) dive in to the meta hole.

Those pacing issues aside, I would say I liked but didn't love the story. I appreciated the writing and the variety of ways in which it was told—cards speaking, live-action videos, mysterious text files— and I'm always down for a mystery, but I'm quite tired of self-referential games about games and the associated meta-humour. There's an "isn't this clever" vibe that isn't backed up by any substance — it's an intriguing conspiracy about a haunted game, but it doesn't say anything interesting with it.

I was also really looking forward to Kaycee's Mod, but it's just that first part of the game except less forgiving and with even less power progression. Total time sink.

I guess I mostly like I'd seen each thing the game did well done better elsewhere. The deckbuilding adventures of Hand of Fate and Slay the Spire; the FMV mystery of Immortality; the run-by-run progression in Hades; the "game about games meta"-ness of Undertale. I had fun, but it dragged on a bit, and I really wish it had some substance to tie it all together... but I won't expect much given the ARG (I looked it up) revealed that the cursed code was stolen from the pocket of LITERALLY HITLER