INSCRYPTION is perhaps the best roguelite deckbuilder to ever exist. In this episode, Brando and some boys take a deep dive into why that is, and why everyone should play it, while also just remarking on everything about the game that's really cool and very well done. BGM is from the game, and is by Jonah Senzel.
Links:
Sacrifices Must Be Made (Game Jam that inspired Inscryption)
Jorddagreatest's itch.io profile
Brando's Socials (& the Discord)
Show Outline
Intro
holy crap
Details
Inscryption
Released October 19, 2021
Exclusively available on Windows
Developed by Daniel Mullins Games
Published by Devolver Digital
Nominated for:
BAFTA Games Best Game and Original Property
The Game Award for Best Independent Game and Best Sim/Strategy Game
British Academy Games Award for Game Design
Won Awards for
Game of the year from the Game Developers Choice Awards
Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the independent games festival
Dan Mullins and Game Background
Dan Mullins previous games & Inscryption inspiration
https://dmullinsgames.itch.io/
“Sacrifices Must Be Made” the original game jam project that started Inscryption
Made for Ludum Dare 43 the theme being “Sacrifices Must Be Made”.
The theme of Sacrifices Must Be Made seems to have shaped many of the gameplay decisions.
The sacrificial events throughout the gameboard.
Pulling teeth for a slight edge.
The Trapper boss fight where it is advantageous for you to sacrifice your creatures in phase one.
Becoming a sacrifice yourself for future runs every time that you die.
I was surprised at how similar it was! From the tutorial, down to gouging out an eye, to the cards and mechanics. Such a solid core to start with! Crazy that it’s even a game jam to start with lol.
Back to Inscryption
Crazy cool (and super well done) blending of genres
roguelite deck builder, escape room, indie dark thriller, puzzler, etc.
“the game is fun” - Reggie
hype 100% of the time
start to finish in two days for me (story)
still haven’t solved all the puzzles? I don’t think? The mystery of the puzzles? Crazy
Leshy’s Cabin
Game mechanics
Deckbuilding
Roguelite aspects (finding items in the cabin, unlocking new creatures, etc.)
Orthodox Roguelite Deckbuilding Decisions (The procedurally generated map path, most aspects of card drafting)
Unorthodox Decisions
The damage scale
Overkill grants currency
Instead of one static upgrade, cards can be upgraded dynamically in any number of ways, sometimes even in “game breaking” ways.
Choose between two decks to draw from.
Yugioh style monster sacrifice
Brando not familiar with yugioh sacrifice lol, but you should tell me on the cast
No discard pile
Only one type of card (unit card)
How card synergies work in Leshi’s cabin. (For instance: How cards don’t typically synergize together more than card tags synergize together in a way that can win you the game.)
What were your favorite strategies?
Mine were mostly about building one shot cards (upgrade the mantis, feed the ringworm to the campfire dudes).
YESSSS I’m right there with you. I think the community calls those “win button” cards? Haha and yeah that was my strategy as well lol. I loved the Mantis God card. My favorite strategy was to get mantis or mantis god and yeah, feed the ringworm to the campfire dudes so I could just have a ridiculously powered mantis god. I also really liked fusing two Moose Bucks together for a +6+14? That gets nutty. Even better is when I could fuse two cards together with sigils, and then have a card with like 3 or 4 sigils on it. I love chasing after those sigils and just getting something stupid good. Maybe we have a section to talk about nutty card combos? Maybe I’ll throw that in at the end.
Escape Room Mechanics
Luke’s videos pt.1
Spoiler Warning for the rest of the podcast (before we start talking about the final fight with the Moon)
I am a smooth brained puzzle solver (trying all the combinations for the clock and the safe before I know what they actually should be)
Brando got him on his third attempt lol (didn’t even stay long enough to get the hook or the upgraded smoke, or the items in the portrait)
Was it squirrels that give bones? If I remember right that was one of my favorite runs.
Oh that sounds really good lol. But nah, I had undying squirrels. So I would draw squirrels for two turns and be able to summon anything else in my deck haha. Broke and woke.
Finale with the moon, taking a picture of Leshy with the spare roll of film, all that good stuff.
16-bit Mode
Mention Luke’s commentary during this and other segments of the game
One of my favorite things in games right now is when the developer knows exactly how the player is feeling? And they manifest it in the game lol. Like in this game, sometimes your cards will get wiped out and Luke goes “Ah f****...” but just barely preceding Luke saying it is my own thought of “Dammit...” Cracks me up lol.
Amazing portion of the game that kinda comes out of nowhere? Different art, different vibes, different tone (bumpin chiptune renditions of some of the cabin music). Great stuff.
deck build variety now something that’s completely under your control.
completely different RPG mechanics that kinda played like pokemon? Collect [cards], battle [trainers], opportunity to freely deckbuild. This section of the game is probably my favorite, as much as I love the cabin. I think it speaks to the nostalgia in me, but having the opportunity to experiment with new cards and mechanics to curate your deck was so cool and really fun.
How long did you spend on the training dummy in the wizard’s tower? I thought that I had gamed the system because I didn’t beat him until I had like 200 coins or something like that because I am a big dummy and thought it would disappear after I beat it lol.
first try, I just beat it up until I got two of the symbols I needed for the combination. When I played through the section a second time however, I stayed there and dealt over 666 damage to it (for the achievement)
Which Scrybe did you aspire to replace? Which one did you actually replace?
I was thinking a lot about the decks in the beginning. I didn’t want to aspire to replace a scribe with a deck build I wasn’t familiar with... so I chose Leshy. Then later, when I was asked which one to replace, I thought it was only fitting for me to replace Leshy. I thought he was the “big bad”, given the cabin portion of the game, so if I replaced him, I figured the game and the code would all go back to normal. But I didn’t account for all the stuff PO3 was saying... lol.
Bone Lord pt.1
P03’s Dominion
Luke’s videos pt. 2
Luke be like “I’m gonna make a YouTube video (Work) today... nah I can’t do this) lmao same bro
the part with the internet where it started to pull in my Steam friends WHAAAAT
the part where they held one of my files hostage (could have turned out very poorly lol, chose something in system folder)
APPARENTLY, if you give the archivist a .WAV (audio) file, it’s played in game and P03 wonders why you’re forcing them to listen to “that racket”
Making your own cards (A very cool mechanic in my opinion.) Made possible by simple gameplay mechanics that blend into a complex system of play.
Making your own boss! That got difficult but was really fun. Gotta mention that lol. All the bosses were really interesting in this section honestly. Wish I could remember the boss that I crafted... There was so many mechanics for it maybe if I saw a list I would remember...
The time travel boss!
(Beat this one by using the “remote detonator” and then saving that setup lol)
Gameplay loop with the energy mechanic... not quite as addicting as the “sacrifice” mechanic? Maybe talk about why that is?
Maybe it’s because there’s a slight loss in strategy? There’s a lot more ways you can play a sacrifice deck, as opposed to an energy deck (where a lot of the time it feels like waiting?)
Bone Lord pt2
Mushroom secret boss
Finale with all Scrybes
Crazy that all the Scrybes and all their props and mechanics are 3D modeled, just for their short final moments in the game.
It almost makes me think that they played with the idea of having a separate gameplay section for each of the scribes.
Luke’s videos pt.3 - dies
Kaycee’s Mod
How many challenges have you been able to complete (prior to recording)
Brando has completed “Skull Storm” (All challenges active at once) - God tier run
Skull storm was specifically possible via (spoilers? aka this is how my run went down)
Undying totem sigil for elk kin
Red Hart infinite combo via goat (while undying)
also lammergier infinite combo in a similar way (gave cockroach undying sigil to lammergier). Also had bone hoard on one of my goats (furthering the speed I could accomplish this)
Had the jar blob man paint one of my goats and he removed the annoying symbol and changed it to infinite sacrifice
tried to always have items that made an opening through the bears like the rotation clock & scissors. Knife from the trader was also super reliable.
waiting for starvation and then using fan or lammergier to fly over those unattackable creatures (similar story with bleach paint on the bears)
good luck after good luck after good luck after good luck. God-tier luck of a run I tell you what. I decided to just keep doing runs until I got that undying totem from the carver and right after I decided that it happened, and from there it was kinda a no brainer what I needed to do, and the game was just kinda nice and gave it to me lol.
How is it so addicting... it felt like I should have gotten discouraged while playing because it kept getting ruthlessly harder, but I continued to come back to play it? Even though the odds seemed absolutely insurmountable? Especially while trying to complete Skull Storm
Endless mode goooood
Not a lot of ways to synergize your deck by purging crap (died a TON because my deck would just get bloated...)
to counteract this... (spoilers? Tips and Tricks?)
Go to the “Cave Trial” and purposefully fail. Which usually meant keeping the deck super synergized, i.e. no bones (so it wouldn’t pass bone cost), variety of kin.
“risk” the pet boggin the deck down to be burned in the campfire
Go in routes where you could choose the blood cost of the creatures, and then choose expensive creatures so you don’t bog down the cheap creatures (Leshy tries to make sure you have at least one creature you can summon on your first turn, so keeping creatures with 1 blood cost or similar to a minimal is critical to strategizing your first few turns)
merge your expensive creatures together with the mushroom docs
my own incompetence lmao. How does the game know when I’ve misplayed? Do you know? Does the game purposefully always make it so there’s a “right” move for the player?
It’s actually completely random, lol. Some people looked into the source code for an answer and it is really just a dice roll at the start of every turn and if that dice roll happens to be a 1 then you get a misplay added.
Outro
Favorite Nutty Card & Sigil Combos (don’t know where else to put this lol)
Beaver with backpacks (completely refills empty pack)
Direwolf with Deathtouch
Mantis God with deathtouch
Goat with Magpie Eye
Oh one of my favorites is Uraruli (the +7+7 rare) with the... autospawn(?) from the corpse maggots lol.
in general totems made everything nutty (unless it was block flying or just flying)
Corpse eater + Undying = a card that would continuously respawn.
Spawn an ant totem with bugs. (Liked it a lot never really got it to work, lol)
Artistic direction
Very cool, free flowing between 2D and 3D spaces with ease, how that added to the experience, etc.
The tricky balance of making lore
subtle, vs in your face (inscyption has a perfect balance, IMO)
I think this more so comes down to what you prefer in games? But still could be an interesting point to touch on.
Story (especially in this type of game) top notch
mystery and intruigue were extremely captivating. It’s all I did for like two days
The lore that I don’t even know about or haven’t put together still...
Speculate on the OLD_DATA
Did you look into the scavenger hunt/cypher decoding stuff that had to go on outside the game in order to find the “real ending”?
the on-camera bits were very good with Luke Carder. A bit cheesey, but it added to the realism
best scrybe, best minion, best talking card, best character, whatever lol or favorite or whatever recap in those departments
replay value (besides the endless mode) - pros and cons of endless mode in comparison to the rest of the entire game
So good that I went achievement hunting (high praise from Brando, only 2 games in Steam library with 100% completion with achievements)
So good that I just kept playing after I beat it... back to back to back.
Hope Dan adds an endless mode to other sections of the game... loved Kaycee’s mod, would enjoy the same treatment with the other parts... if that would even mechanically be possible?
Apparently, there is an ARG???
they talk about it on the Dan Mullins Discord, don’t know anything about it
apparently, has been solved
