Ready for a very interesting deck-building experience? Then Inscryption from Daniel Mullins Games and Devolver Digital is one to check out. Read our Inscryption review!

 

Ready for a very interesting deck-building experience? Then Inscryption from Daniel Mullins Games and Devolver Digital is one to check out on Nintendo Switch. Inscryption is a popular card game that was released on Steam last year, and it’s now made its way to the Nintendo Switch. The game is, first and foremost, a deckbuilding roguelike horror game that places in an escape room type of experience with some puzzle elements to work your way through.

When you boot up the game for the first time, instead of the usual New Game trope, you instead have to use Continue… and that’s when you are introduced to a dark shadow figure with only glowing orange eyes visible in the back. That alone gives off the horror vibes the game will offer. You’ll be dealt a set of cards of a variety of wild animals, which you’ll have to put to good use to be able to survive this ordeal. Are you ready?

 

What cards can you use? Well, you’ll have access to several squirrels, which are used as a sacrifice to summon more powerful cards. You can use skunks for debuffs, turtles for defense, and wolves for powerful attacks. These are just the tip of the iceberg, as there are many more cards for you to unlock, which will add a lot of variety to your deck. Sometimes you’ll want to add mighty cards that cost a lot but can make a huge difference if timed just right, while others, you will want to focus on summoning a horde of creatures at a lower cost so that you can try to overwhelm your opponent.

The tutorial does a great job of showing you all of the basics as you progress through each section. You’ll learn how for every point of damage dealt to your opponent, a large tooth will be placed on the scales that will tip things in your favor. Tip the scale enough, and you win! The opposite is also true, so if your opponent deals a lot of damage in short bursts or in a single go, enough teeth will be placed on the scale to make you lose. There is no direct points system, and this is something that made the game stand out for me. You must tip the scales to change your fate!

 

The map is like an old-fashioned piece of parchment that you can progress through as you win battles and complete objectives. The map is full of different options for you to consider. You can refill your backpack with useful items, battle regular and elite enemies, sacrifice a card to transfer sigils to another card, and more. The game is full of puzzles as well and has lots of hidden secrets. With the game being a roguelike, it is very unlikely you will find everything during a single playthrough since the randomization part of the equation will keep you on your toes.

The game rewards you for trying things out and taking risks. For example, what is that weird jar of goo you find along the way good for? You will have to play the game to find that out, and that is the aim of Inscryption – trying things out and taking risks for greater rewards. Sure, sometimes things can go terribly wrong, wildly wrong even, but you will learn some lessons for future playthroughs. After each game, you will be given a chance to craft a new powerful card to play on your next attempt, for which you can add a sigil from one of the cards you used for your previous run, the cost of one of the cards, and its stats.

 

You can leave the table to inspect the items in your backpack and look at the game master’s fairly empty cabin. Clicking on things will either benefit you, give you a clue towards finding something useful, or will require that you use one of the special items you’ve found. You can be rewarded with boosts that will help you in subsequent runs, new cards being added to future runs, and more.

To be honest, I am not usually a big fan of deckbuilding games, but Inscryption has something that kept me coming back for more. It introduced new gameplay mechanics at a steady pace, teaching you things as you progress through the game’s story and adding more and more layers to what is a very interesting experience. Easy to pick up once you have the hang of it but a challenge to master. There’s also a bit of a horror twist to the game and what it offers, which is why it’s a Rated m for Mature experience. It’s certainly a creepy game!

I can easily recommend Inscryption to those of you new to the deckbuilding genre since it does a great job teaching you all of the basics while offering an experience unlike anything else you’ve played before. There are some twists along the way that I won’t discuss since they would end up spoiling the experience for you, which is why you should go into this one without reading anything else about it. Inscryption is out on Nintendo Switch with a $19.99 asking price, and it’s definitely money well spent.

Disclaimer
This Inscryption review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Devolver Digital.