Inscryption is one of those games that’s hard to review because, like a magic trick, it loses its charm upon close examination. How do you review a game that’s best experienced completely blind? Fortunately, you don't really need a review of Inscryption. This is because Daniel Mullins was gracious enough to provide a demo you can try out for free (something I really wish more developers would do). If you’re truly concerned about the quality of this title, give the demo a shot. But if you’d like to hear what this particular random internet guy thought about Inscryption read on at your own risk.

I’ll keep it brief. I thought it was a pretty good, but uneven game. My biggest problem is that once Inscryption throws its skirt at the end of act one, it never quite hits its stride again. In particular, the second act is weak as hell. The intriguing art and sound design of the first act are discarded and replaced by an utterly bland 2D pixel art aesthetic. I could forgive the downgrade in atmosphere if the gameplay didn’t also take a serious hit. Act two introduces a bunch of superfluous side-mechanics that muddy the clear and focused design of act one. Because of this, I found myself completely disengaged from the newly introduced card collecting aspect of the game. This is worsened by the fact that most opponents during this act provided very little challenge, so I didn’t feel incentivised to create new decks to counter their strategies. I basically rolled through this chapter with my starter deck. Thankfully the third act gets back on script, though it never quite reaches the highs of act one (even if it did have some funny bosses).

Gripes aside, I still had a lot of fun with Inscryption and I can easily recommend it. If you enjoy card games, you’ll probably enjoy this unique deconstruction of the genre.