Daniel Mullins has recently released a new game called Inscryption. I find this game to be an interesting dive into the preponderance of the idea of digital life and what our computers know about use. This game is split into 5 parts/sections in my mind a section of live action video interludes telling the story of the character that we play as a card game youtuber who found a mysterious floppy disk in the woods containing a game, a 3D cabin we can explore and play a card game with a cannibal where if we lose we get trapped in a photograph, a 2D world with a pixel style that we explore and fight the 4 card masters, a 3D world like the cabin but it’s a factory and we fight a robot in card games as he tries to escape to the internet, and the game's conclusion where we’ve started to delete the game and say goodbye to the characters as they die.
One of the central themes of the second section is the idea of sacrifice and rebirth. The cannibals card game is centered around the idea of sacrificing weak creatures to summon more powerful ones. These sacrificed creatures will return next round creating a cycle of death and birth. We go through this same process when we win or lose a game and our past essence is trapped in a photograph. This stays as a defining part of the cannibal as he is to defeat the robot killing himself with the whole game.
The robot section of the game brings up an interesting theme of digital information as the game takes files from your computer to show how the robot is getting more control of our system. This section also brings up ideas of security of digital information as the robot tricks the player into solving CAPTCHA questions, the only thing preventing him from accessing our computer and spreading himself across the internet.
I would have to say I highly recommend this game. It contains many interesting themes and thoughts and pushes the idea of what a game should and can do.
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