INSCRYPTION
Cards of darkness
Developer/ publisher Daniel Mullins Games
Format PC
Origin Canada
Release 2021
You are sitting at a candlelit table in a wooden cabin. You are playing cards. You can’t make out your opponent’s face in the darkness – only its large, hungry eyes and the masks it puts on and takes off with enormous, leathery fingers. The card game – summarised by Inscryption’s creator Daniel Mullins as “a deck-building Roguelike in the vein of Slay The Spire” – sees you lining up cards to inflict or block damage, as measured by a pair of golden scales. Cards have a blood price: more powerful varieties require you to sacrifice others for points. Between card battles you move a figurine around a dotted parchment map. It’s not clear what you’re playing for, but the stakes are obviously high.