genre names are genre lames

"Metroidvania" is my favorite genre of game. I thought this was a special thing about me until I found out I was not the only Metroid fan.

The title is pretty bad, though. "Metroidlikes" are what I'm really interested in, with only a few proper MVs interesting to me (Hollow Knight, Silksong, and Environmental Station Alpha being exceptions.

In searching for something to scratch the Metroid Prime itch, I was recommended to play Outer Wilds , which I found to be my favorite game ever. I don't want to overhype it, but Outer Wilds at least makes for undeniable proof of games not only as art, but as a medium with unique capacities to convey narratives and ideas, rather than just a vehicle for experiences.

Outer Wilds joins Tunic as one of these very special games. Some genre names proposed as "Tunicwilds" or "Brainvanias", but I think "puzzlebox" games are more appropriate. Environmental Station Alpha is sometimes included in this genre for its endgame.

I think a "puzzlebox" is any game that slowly expands with your knowledge, in a way that any subsequent playthough is totally different for it.

Inscryption is not a puzzlebox , as far as I can tell. If I were to play through Inscryption, I'd have an edge for knowing the puzzles in the cabin.

I hated Inscryption

Inscryption is a horror card game with rogue-like mechanics. I truly hate rogue-like mechanics, and looking at a 12h average playtime made me think, "This game is not for me". I didn't wanna spend twelve hours in no stinkin cabin playing YuGiOh.

In the cabin, I threw myself at the bosses time after time, being thrown into impossible situations. I got caught in the quagmire of roguelikes where my RNG just wasn't very good. I had some cool ideas (what if I combined X with Y? what if I got Z?) but the luck just didn't pan out over the ~three hours I gave it years ago.

I think a good roguelike must cheat, scrape, lie, and concoct against its own RNG. If you have 1,000,000 players, and it takes 1 hour to roll a magic RNG die, then 1/1296 of them will go three hours in and roll nothing but singles.

I love Inscryption

I am thankful to cute_spider for encouraging me to reconsider. This is an excellent game.

See, the game starts in a cabin, in which you can try classic point-and-click "escape room" things. Think the old flash game "Crimson Room", but the puzzles are mostly disjoint and are used to buff your main objective: Winning a game of YuGiOh.

I hope this is not too much of a spoiler, but: There is more game after you beat the guy at YuGiOh. You will not be surprised to learn that this is a game by the boss of Pony Island.

Luckily for me, I was able to abuse the RNG very easily very quickly. I created a special card that lets me beat most encounters once I acquire it, and then I got that card early on with most bosses. Even then, this took me four (!) hours.

Caveat that I cheated at the puzzles in the cabin once I was two hours in, because even two hours was too much time to spend playing YuGiOh in a cabin. I have no qualms about cheating, but the puzzles turned out to be combinatorially far simpler than I thought they were. But my main regret was how much of the rest of the game was spoiled for me.

I love Inscryption (warning, more spoilers)

After beating Inscryption, I settled down for a nice game of Inscryption.

As you might guess, the game transforms in a small sense once you beat the guy at YuGiOh. But the bulk of the game is more cards, and so if you didn't like the card part at the start, you won't like the rest.

The good news is that the game abandons the "roguelike" mechanic pretty quickly, so you aren't settling down for a two-to-twenty hour adventure.

delightful

The game is pretty delightful and is easy to recommend for anyone who likes Slay the Spire II but wishes there was a finished card game to play.

I think my favorite thing about indie games is they're the only ones to consistently delight you. You play the game and you go ":D" or ":O" and "holy shit" pretty often.

If you like playing games that delight you, this might be such a game to do it.