L.L. Ford on Substack: "Joyous Macabre Monday everyone! For those of you who like a good video game, I have a recommendation to share! This past week I was busy doing edits on an important grant, but every time my mind wandered, it wandered to Inscryption. More times than I care to admit my late night …"

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The Trials of Astra (and other short stories)

Joyous Macabre Monday everyone! For those of you who like a good video game, I have a recommendation to share! This past week I was busy doing edits on an important grant, but every time my mind wandered, it wandered to Inscryption. More times than I care to admit my late night writing sessions would devolve into another extremely fun card game with slow unsettling music echoing through my computer screen. Oops another late night, but another card game won!

Inscryption dabbles in analogue horror, but that really takes a backseat to the main horror themed gameplay loop. The premise is simple: You are trapped in a cabin with an unknown entity that wants you to win in cards or die. The cards speak with you, giving you hints on how to win, and there’s puzzles in the cabin that you can solve to learn more about the world and gain an upper hand. You unlock new cards, uncover new secrets, and learn about the strange game within a game that is Inscryption. This game is absolutely brilliant to me. I actually originally beat the game in the Fall of 2022, but for some reason last week I started playing again. The game loop is addictive. The dark themes and creepy style is unsettling, and the story - even the story laced into the DLC - is so strange and fun.

I highly recommend this game if you want something that’s quick and easy to jump in and out of. If you like rogue-lite games then I definitely recommend it. If you’re hesitant because you don’t like deck building games I will say this: this is the only deck building game I actually like. Don’t let that stop you. To my knowledge the game is on PlayStation and Steam, but the requirements to run it on PC are extremely low given that my janky little computer that I bought for grad school runs it just fine. Anyways, if you play I hope you enjoy!