Inscryption is a strange conglomerate of gaming styles meshed together in a bizarre high-res almost pixel style of game. You’ve got a little bit of everything here, to gleam interest from. A roguelike deckbuilding card-battle system. A random path progression similar to that of Curse of the Dead Gods. A faceless opponent who is both reassuring as well as threatening. A powerful ambient overtone and dark visuals to match. Is Inscryption trying too hard to inscribe itself upon the player? Or is this a hidden gem just waiting to be unleashed?

I got to play the demo of Inscryption and get an early look at what the developers have in store. Like the demos of yore, there is about 30 to 45 minutes’ worth of game here, give or take depending on your RNG luck. Whilst this is a nice taste of the game, it leaves a little to the imagination. The basic premise is explored here. The card battles, the random nature of the progress path. The threatening eyeball creature shrouded in darkness, who tells you what to do, but doesn’t much care if you survive doing so.

The “antagonist” if you want to call him that, is probably the best part of the game, from what I got to experience. He is both menacing and reassuring simultaneously. He makes no qualms about the fact he is bending the rules, but also gives you every opportunity to succeed. He almost behaves like a chaotic neutral DM. He tells you to get up and stretch, to look around and take your time, but not to touch his things. Which you then do, and he doesn’t actually care. I’d rather feel threatened for disobeying him, than him actually rewarding my defiance at times. There is an underlying plot here, certain cards being locked away. The Stoat card talking to you and trying to help you defeat the void that is forcing you to play these games.

The fundamentals of a deeper plot exist here and are only lightly touched upon. It left me wanting to know more, and actually does the job of building anticipation for the full release. Problematically, it also seems like the depth of the story itself, may be lacking. I had to take everything as a “it’ll be explained” mentality. Yet, I almost feel like, it won’t be explained well enough, if I play the game well. To even get half the story, I had to die at least once. I understand this is the logic with roguelike games, being an avid fan of them. Yet, roguelikes also do a fairly good job of explaining the story, if you are successful in them as well. Inscryption feels like it may be walking that line a little too closely.

The card game aspect is fun enough. It’s a simply 4v4 system, different sigils on certain cards give them different effects. The cub who becomes a wolf after a turn has passed. The Beaver who summons obstructions either side of him that block direct damage. The fundamental concept of the game is easy to learn, straight forward to play, and appears to be incredibly frustrating to master. The sheer amount of different cards I got to experience in the 45 minutes I played (and the half hour I sat idle listening to the foreboding music) was impressive. I can see a lot of care has gone into crafting the card game itself, which lends to the longevity and potential enjoyment of the game.

There is also an escape room puzzle like system occurring in the world around the game. A code to a safe in a book, which unlocks a safe with the Stinkbug, which in turn gives more story depth in conversations between the Stoat and Stinkbug cards. A key, that then unlocks a chest, that has some unique and powerful cards in it. Exploring the environment and working out these puzzles is rewarding. The game gives you more to play with, by doing the puzzles. Annoyingly, this is where I feel the eyeball creature should punish you in some way. It tells you not to touch its things, then proceeds to tell you to keep the cards when you find them. There is a disconnect in the narrative here, that hopefully is rectified in the full version.

Failure however, is not a bad thing. Upon death, you are greeted with a unique system. The Death Card. You get offered to create a card, that you chose the cost of, and what sigil it has, as well as the health and power of the card, from randomly chosen cards that you had collected in your attempt. This is then added into your deck, and depending on your combination, you end up with an incredibly powerful card, that you have unfortunately named “Cardy McCardface”. Or, that just might be me.

Overall, Inscryption is an interesting take on the roguelike deckbuilder style of game that is growing more and more prevalent. It’s dark overtone, with foreboding music, an unsettling opponent and a darker overarching story. There is a taste of what is possible here, and whilst I wished for a little more, it does what it needs to. This is a good game, with potential to be great. The developers should look at making the threats of the antagonist more dangerous, especially when it comes to solving the puzzles. I’m very interested to see where this is going.

Definitely one to watch.

Early hands on with the game was provided by Devolver Digital