Inscryption (2021) and the NPC's lament (major spoilers)
A runaway indie hit inscribes itself in a young tradition of presenting the pathos of Non-Playable Characters that are self-aware.
![Review] The Bizzare, Ever-Shifting, Folk Horror Card Game 'Inscryption' is a Delectable Descent Into Weirdness - Bloody Disgusting](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!d8v7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbfaaf85-0e0d-41e1-8e3f-7ee4a9470846_1862x1008.jpeg "Review] The Bizzare, Ever-Shifting, Folk Horror Card Game 'Inscryption' is a Delectable Descent Into Weirdness - Bloody Disgusting")
I loved Inscryption. Believe the hype, go play Inscryption. You will very likely love it. I do not at all recommend you read this post if you haven’t played it, because I’m truly sure that the game does a commendable job achieving its aesthetic effect through the element of surprise. This is just another way of saying that, if you haven’t played it, you will like it better if you go in blind. I’ll just say, before starting the post proper, is that the game stands out for the way it is relentlessly, masterfully, and earnestly meta.
Spoilers ahead.
“Meta” videogames are not exactly new. The notion that a videogame will comment on its own status as a game has been around for a while, and any “first” instances we could name will probably have an even earlier precedent, as this is an established trope in gaming. A famous example is 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, for the original PlayStation, in which a boss enemy called Psycho Mantis can read the device’s memory card and comment if some games are stored within it, seeming to address the player directly rather than the diegetic main character; Another often-noted example is 2002’s Eternal Darkness for the GameCube, a horror game that simulated real system errors in the player’s TV or console to generate tension. These are both examples of minor shout-outs to the fact that you’re playing a game (and I will argue later that most games do this, to varying degrees) but in the last 10 years or so in the Indie Revolution landscape we have come to know newer examples of meta-videogame commentary done more systematically and persistently through both a game’s design and narrative (or narrative design, as the case might be).
Psycho Mantis reads the player’s memory card and comments on the fact that they play Castlevania.
The most influential example of this meta current in games is probably one of the canonical darlings of the indie era (one of the indie revolution’s great heroes): Undertale, which surprised gamers in 2015 with its intricate and creative save system, which remembered the results of previous “runs” (or beginning-to-end playthroughs of the game) and had the characters comment on them in new runs afterwards. These characters (known as Non-Playable Characters or NPCs in videogame parlance) also happened to be very well written by the game’s creator Toby Fox, so that these “remembering” dialogues were impactful, especially in their most commented version of all: the result of a genocide run. If the player chooses to kill every single character in the game during a run, in the next run the characters will express pain, dread, fear and sadness at his previous choice. This scenario combines the threads of both videogame meta-commentary and the medium’s ongoing interest in questioning the player’s in-game choices (a line of inquiry best represented by 2012’s Spec Ops: The Line) to produce a combined effect that I call the NPC’s Lament.
The NPC’s Lament is an aesthetic effect achieved by games that generate a sense of connection between the player and the game’s characters as NPC’s. In these games, the NPCs are understood to exist as beings within a game, playing a role in the gameplay and story relatively separate from their own personality. We can think of this in the terms of Toy Story: “Sheriff Woody” and “Buzz Lightyear” are characters (one from an old TV puppet show, and the other based on “Buzz Lightyear”, who is apparently a real person from the Toy Story universe) but the individual toys themselves have their own personalities and inner lives, formed from their own experience as toys separate from their role in their respective IPs, as shown throughout the film series; in Toy Story (1995) Buzz starts the movie convinced that he is “Buzz Lightyear” and comes to realize that he is only Buzz, a toy based on “Buzz Lightyear”; In Toy Story 2 Buzz comes into contact with other toys made from the same model that haven’t yet escaped their factory programming and all think, just like he did in the first movie, that they’re the actual “Buzz Lightyear of Star Command”; And, finally, this point is belabored again in Toy Story 3, when Buzz is once again reset into believing he’s “Buzz Lightyear” the pre-packaged character.
Still from Toy Story 2 (1999): Buzz the character we know sees other toys who all believe they’re “Buzz Lightyear” the public figure. This eventually leads to violence.
Videogames that traffic in the NPC’s Lament make a distinction (perhaps not as stark) between the game’s character (who would be like “Buzz Lightyear” the factory-settings character assigned to the toy) and the NPC (who would be like the Buzz who becomes friends with Woody and realizes that he’s just a toy). As such, these NPCs are aware that they exist within a game, and the player comes to understand that they’re aware of this, and can therefore relate to a different type of character. “Lamenting” NPCs were pioneered (at least as far as I know) by Undertale, particularly the characters of Flowey and Sans, who comment on your previous runs and on the cyclical nature of repeatedly playing a game. This is different from the storytelling framework of a game like Hades (2018), where the consecutive runs are decidedly diegetic: in Hades, you play as Hades’ son Zagreus, who repeatedly tries to escape the underworld. These attempts are accounted for in the story and commented upon by the other characters, who comment on your persistence and on the fact that (some of them) are also trapped in the underworld but never give any indication that they’re aware of the fact that they exist within a videogame. Hades is an excellent game with an outstanding story, but it doesn’t traffic in what I talk about with the notion of the NPC’s Lament.
Hypnos, a character from the videogame Hades who comments on the reason you died in your previous run and, sometimes, even offers advice.
Perhaps the idea will be clearer once I explain how it’s done in the context of Inscryption’s story, so I will now go on to summarize it in no great detail to try and avoid this post feeling bloated.
Last warning: I am about to spoil the entire plot of the 2021 videogame Inscryption.
Inscryption begins in a standard videogame start screen, completely normal save for the fact that the New Game button is greyed out and your only option is to press Continue. When you select it you start in creepy cabin. In first person, you sit across a table from an entity covered in shadows, with glowing eyes and an unnerving, inhuman voice. It explains the rules to a card battle game and tells you that, if you lose, the penalty is that it will kill you. After you win your first match, you are shown a strange board game that serves as the overworld for a larger game that contains the card battles. In this map you move across a growing set of encounters that allow you to accrue more cards for your deck (later on you may also upgrade or gamble on them) as well as various items and bonuses that you can use during the combat encounters, which are interspersed as you move along the map. As you play, you discover that the overall game is a roguelike, based around the idea of playing many different runs and slowly getting better at it, fighting your way as you earn skills and other bonuses (like special cards), dying repeatedly, and eventually beating a series of bosses before a challenging final fight.
A typical combat encounter from Act 1, with different items and bonuses in play. Every element on the board (like the scales and the candles) serves a gameplay purpose as a sort of diegetic UI.
In addition to the game that you play on the table, you can also get up and wander around the small confines of the cabin. In it, you can engage in limited dialogue and puzzle mechanics to unlock new cards, new items, and eventually steal a special film canister that is necessary to progress the story after the table game’s final fight. Finding the film canister is instantly poignant because, whenever you lose the table game, the shadowy figure kills you by photographing you with a big old-timey camera. There are many more details that make this part of the game enjoyable, but for now I’ll only mention another one: Some of the cards that you acquire by playing seem to talk to you, encouraging to solve the cabin’s puzzles in order to mount an escape. This adds to the sense of dread that you feel in the game as there is very clearly more going on here, something’s not right, and the cards often mention a previous, more agreeable state of affairs.
A talking card taking advantage of a human’s natural inclination to mistrust videogame antagonists and throw their lot in with a furry creature.
When you finally beat the final boss (who is the shadowy figure itself) you manage to wrest away his camera and load it with the canister. You take a picture of him and trap him in a playing card, at which point you can finally access the New Game button and reset the game.
It bears mentioning (although it poses a challenge for summarizing the story in written form) that as you progress through the game you will sometimes shift from the cabin into a fictional software called KamWerks. In it, you’ll be able to see clips taken by a YouTuber called Luke “The Lucky” Carder, who makes videos on collectible card games and comments on them. In one such video, Luke seems to have acquired packs from a now-rare game called “Inscryption”, and films his reaction as he opens them and finds, in a cool suspenseful twist, cards that are not available in the game you are playing against the figure in the cabin. This is an effective first major hint that something’s really not right. He finds that one of the cards has coordinates written on it, and then on other clips he goes to a forest to dig at their exact location and finds the floppy disk containing “Inscryption”, a videogame he’s never heard of. He goes on to look into this previously-unknown videogame and you, the player, are updated on his progress and increasing paranoia throughout other similar interludes at different points in the game.
Inscryption’s human-level story is relayed through an entirely different interface presented as a different piece of software.
To recap, Act 1 of the real-life videogame Inscryption presents us with two levels of reality: one set in our contemporary world and in which Luke Carder finds a videogame, and one that is the diegetic game Luke found and whose gameplay he seems to be recording. It would seem that when Luke (played, in a sense, by the player who is playing the real-life game) finally beats “Inscryption” (the fictional videogame in the real game’s plot) he may discover why the game development company that made it seems to want it back. And, in the end, he does, but not before playing through another two different versions of that same game.
An incomplete illustration of the many kinds of content available in Inscryption, made by me.
After you beat the figure and use the New Game button, you are shown a new cutscene, one that, in pixel art, tells you a whole new story about a world ruled by Scrybes who use cards and will be fought by a challenger. After it, you start “Inscryption”, the original game before it was modified by one of the Scrybe-role boss NPC’s known as Leshy. Leshy is the master of only one of four types of cards, he controls Beast cards, while the other three NPCs control Tech, Death and Magic. Each one of these bosses from the original game had been subjugated by Leshy in his version of “Inscryption” and turned into cards, those same cards that talked to you and explained how to mount their escape. The unsettling element of malcontent NPCs in Leshy’s version of “Inscyption” (known by real-world players as Act 1) plotted to undermine his creation and return the game to its original, much more traditionally game-like, form.
Screenshot from Inscryption’s Act 2. This section introduces a new mechanic where one can customize the exact content of one’s deck out of a limited number of cards. This is only one example of how this current write-up is in no way exhaustive.
I won’t go into much detail about Act 2, but suffice it to say that its graphic style is 16 bit pixel art, it introduces new mechanics pertaining to the previously-unavailable types of cards, you fight each Scrybe as a mechanically-unique boss fight (including Leshy as the boss of beast cards) and is, in gameplay terms, excellent and a whole lot of fun. The NPC who helped the most to mount the escape from Act 1 is in Act 2 shown to be a robot called P03, and plots a way for you to, inadvertently, help him be the one to now modify “Inscryption” (the fictional game that Luke Carder is playing) into a version that he designs. Act 3 is an eerie parallel of Act 1, except now it’s a new version of the game, this time controlled by P03 and with a different set of rules. Starting from your fight with Leshy in Act 2 and throughout Act 3, both him and P03 comment on the fact that, when they modify “Inscryption”, they also design it. P03 chooses new rules that seem to him more “logical” that the ones Leshy decided, while Leshy laments that the others don’t share his vision for an atmospheric and integral horror experience (and, speaking as a gamer, I have to agree with Leshy here that his vision is great). Act 3 ends with the other three Scrybes managing to overthrow P03 before he can carry out his plot to upload his version of the game online, and one of the Scrybes (Grimora, a necromancing witch) decides to completely delete the fictional game and begins the real game’s emotional climax.
Grimora showcases what might’ve been one of her boss battles before it gets abruptly deleted. Magnificus clings on to life even as the game is deleting itself all around him.
In this sequence, the player can battle both Scrybes who have previously not had a chance to showcase what they would make as their version of “Inscryption.” Grimora is at ease with her fate, while the other Scrybe (the wizard Magnificus) agonizes as the game is undone around him. In neither one of those encounters does it really matter if the player wins (although Gamora’s version looks like it actually would be fun), and that’s also the case in another final match that comes between facing those other two. It is the final match against Leshy and it’s my favorite part of the game.
“Please, let us continue,” says Leshy, “we don’t need to keep score.”
Leshy asks you to play against him in one final match of his original game. If you beat him, he asks you to play again. Meanwhile, the game is being deleted and more and more items are removed from the table. Eventually, you’re no longer playing for victory or for points. It’s just two old friends playing for fun. This part stands in stark contrast to the sinister tone of Act 1, where Leshy had deliberately cast himself as a mysterious and menacing figure (interestingly, according to the game’s logic, all the real-world critics who praised that part of the game would’ve been in reality praising the design by Leshy). The once-obliquely-motivated figure comes across as earnestly interested in sharing his game, and I couldn’t help but feel a real sense of fellowship and even tenderness in playing this NPC’s favorite creation in the final moments before his death. Inscryption is outstanding, in my mind, for achieving exactly this: the aesthetic effect of generating sorrow over the fate of a character that started out as an unnerving villain. The early game is framed in such a way that the real-life player could be forgiven for thinking that its story revolves around the supernatural, some sort of virus or perhaps just sinister messaging by a genuinely malevolent entity, but, in the end, we come out feeling sympathy for Leshy, and bonding with him over his dedication to crafting what is, from the perspective of you as a player (who has spent hours playing it), a very good game.
You say goodbye to Leshy with one last sportsmanlike handshake.
The end of the Luke carder story is that he finds evidence hidden in the floppy disk, perhaps pertaining to previous crimes committed by the company and found out by an employee who is currently dead. I, for one, appreciate the ambiguity over what exactly it is that he found. This information is hidden from us because of a redaction in the KamWerks footage, which seems to imply that the company has tampered with it. A horror game to the end, the last clip shows Luke being murdered by a company employee shortly after he found out their crimes. I am, however, much more interested in the story about the NPCs within the fictional videogame, and particularly the roles of Magnificus, P03, and Leshy.
Analysis: the NPC’s lament in Inscryption
As I established in the beginning, I use the term the NPC’s Lament to describe game stories in which their characters are presented as beings who are aware of their condition as NPCs within a game. I use “lament” because, in both instances of this new trope that I’ve played (Inscryption and Undertale) this knowledge gives rise to melancholy emotions about their fate. In both games, self-aware NPC’s lament their condition, either because they’ll be endlessly subjected to violence (as is the case in Undertale) or because they’re dissatisfied with the game they’re in (like P03 and Leshy in Inscyption). As far as I know, contemporary independent narrative design is yet to posit characters who are happy with being NPCs.
Similar to the role of Flowey in Undertale, Leshy and P03 are able to modify the game to achieve different aims. But whereas Flowey’s ability to alter the in-game reality is diegetically explained as a magical power to turn back time, Leshy and P03 openly and earnestly engage in game design. Their overt aim is to design a good videogame and create an experience so the player will have fun. In the case of P03, the aim of getting Luke to play his game is subordinate to the goal of uploading his game to the internet, so it will be downloaded and he will live on in myriads of copies as the master of his own realm. Leshy didn’t have an ulterior motive, however, and that makes him a very interesting videogame hero. One feels empathy for him because all he ever wanted was to make a good game. In a sense, through Inscryption, developer Daniel Mullins has given videogames their equivalent of the classic “novel about writing a novel” or “movie about writing/making a movie.” It is an epic that centers around the challenges and aspirations present in video game development, with particular attention paid to design. Leshy and P03 are both designers who seek the human player’s approval, in a pushy needy way in the case of P03 and with the confidence of a master in the case of Leshy. Therefore, Inscyption not only discusses game design and the desire to make games through its story, but also offers a typology of at least two types of designers. Leshy is presented as not only the one with the best personality, but also as ultimately the better designer because, unlike P03, his intentions were pure. All he wanted was to make a good videogame (unlike P03’s petty ambition, which reminds one of the companies behind cynical play-to-earn pseudo-games sprouting up over the last year) and it is because Leshy sincerely wanted to make something fun that he not only manages it, but he crafts an experience that he and the player can share in good faith in his moment of death.
I also believe there’s another layer of commentary here, one that relies on the fact that the cards that talk to you during Act 1 end up undoing the game, destroying Leshy’s life’s work. These cards are elements that contribute to the cabin’s atmosphere of horror, and yet they literally work against this version of the game. This, to me, is reflective of the way that any form of meta commentary in games works against preserving a sense of immersion. In the story previous to the start of Act 1, Leshy creates an effective horror game, but some of the elements that make it so creepy (the talking malcontent cards) deliberately conspire to undo all of his hard work. In this way, Inscryption is as much telling a story about the fictional character Leshy as it is commenting on the paradoxes inherent in fourth-wall-breaking narrative design. Inscryption is thus not only a game about the NPC's Lament, but also about the plight of every game designer. Not only quirky overtly-meta elements like the talking cards break the illusion, but any self-evidently "gamey" elements (like health pickups, non-diegetic UIs or skill trees) break immediate immersion in order to generate engagement (be it delight at the meta nature of the element or an easier or more specific experience of play). It's a paradox at the heart of any competent exercise of game design and one that can perhaps only be resolved by pointing directly at it and saying "here, look: the illusion of feeling immersed in a game is necessarily built with elements that yank you away from it, the end of immersion is inherent to any sense of immersion, it's baked in, it's part of it, it's (not for lack of a better word) inscribed."
And I love that.