What is that thing sitting at the table opposite me? All I can see are its orange eyes swirling in the darkness like the snake from The Jungle Book. And I tell you what it makes me feel: menaced. I know this thing doesn’t like me and I feel like it wants to hurt me, but I can do nothing about it. I have to play its games, and it feels like it’s my fate at stake.
Inscryption
- Developer: Daniel Mullins Games
- Publisher: Devolver Digital
- Platform: Demo played on PC
- Availability: Releases 19th October on Steam for £16.79. Demo available there, for free, now
I catch a glimpse of the thing every so often. I see a large, knobbly hand, green and weathered, and I hear its cheesegrater voice, scraping out words. Sometimes I see a face, or the outline of a face, but it’s gone as soon as I realise it, engulfed again by shadow or obscured by a mask. And if it is a mask, it becomes a caricature for me, playing the role of a yee-haw gold prospector for a special boss encounter.
It is weird. Inscryption is weird. And that’s what I like about it.
Without those things, it would just be a bit like Magic: The Gathering. I think that’s what the nuts and bolts of it are. Broadly, two players sit at a table and play creature-cards in their lanes. Those creatures either attack another creature opposite them, or damage the other player if the lane is empty. Do enough damage to the other player and you win.
Like Magic, creatures have health and damage counts, and various abilities based around similar concepts. But unlike in Magic, you don’t use mana (gained from lands) to summon them. Instead, and in keeping with the gruesome theme of the game, you use blood and bones, earned from sacrifices.