History VideoGame / Inscryption

* StealthSequel: To ''VideoGame/TheHex'', as [=GameFuna=], the gaming company that Lionel Snill sold his characters to, is revealed to be the creator of ''Inscryption''. A character from the game even appears in Act 2.

* VariableMix: The battle against Leshy adds an extra instrument based on which mask he's wearing on that turn. Piano for Prospector, standing bass for Angler, and humming for Trapper.

** In Golly's first phase, you will receive a card created by another player. In her second phase, ''you'' then create your own card and send it to another player over the internet; if they win, you win.

* WeaksauceWeakness: Leshy's ultimate card is the Moon, a massive card with 40 health and attacks on all lanes at once. Playing the humble Stinkbug or any card with the Stinky Sigil will reduce the Moon's attack to zero, making it completely ineffective. If you do this, Leshy [[DevelopersForesight will have special dialogue]] complaining about how moons do not have a sense of smell and how he didn't expect the battle to go like this.
** Any creature with Touch of Death can also kill the Moon in one hit.
** Both of these weaknesses have been patched in Kaycee's Mod.

* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Your opponent [[NotPlayingFairWithResources does not have to make sacrifices to play cards like you do]]. He ''does'', however, still have a limited deck, which is much smaller than the player's... but he also doesn't suffer from Starvation cards when he runs out like you do. [[ZigZaggingTrope On the other hand,]] after the first turn, your opponent can't play cards directly onto the board like the player can, and instead must place cards in a back-line queue the turn before, allowing the player to play reactively to upcoming threats. Plus, the player's lack of a back-line means they don't need to worry about [[BackbenchHittingAttack overkill damage]], and the opponent never uses modified cards with additional sigils or increased stats like the player can. These rules also apply to opponents in act 2 and 3.

* {{Metafiction}}: As with pretty much everything Daniel Mullens has made. For one thing, you aren't actually playing ''Inscryption'', you're playing as someone ''watching'' Luke (an aspiring Youtuber) play ''Inscryption''.

** Should you manage to get much further into the game without dying than you were expected to, the next boss fight will suddenly glitch out on its second phase with the words "TOO FAST, TOO SOON", and [[RocksFallEveryoneDies the boss's side of the board will be replaced with 8 overpowered grizzly cards]]. However, with the right tools and/or cards, [[LordBritishPostulate it IS possible to beat the grizzly wave regardless]] and [[SequenceBreaking make it all the way to the final boss on your first run]]. In Kaycee's Mod, one of the [[SelfImposedChallenge Self-Imposed Challenges]] unlocked during progression makes it so all bosses send out the grizzlies by default.

* DoomsdayDevice: During World War II, the Nazis constructed a device capable of wiping out half of Europe on activation. The device still exists and the Karnoffel Code stored in OLD_DATA is its activation sequence.

* CoolMask: Your host has a collection of them and will put one on during a boss fight. Which one he uses depends on the boss you are facing. He makes sure to "roleplay" as the character the mask represents too. All of which represents his old allies back when he shared his position with the other Scrybes.

** When you first start the game, you hear a guy offscreen talk like he's starting up a new game before the sounds of an old-fashioned game booting up and you enter the main menu. That's not just a cute little meta one-off: This is Luke, [[FramingDevice the guy you are playing as, right as he starts the game ''Inscryption''. You won't be hearing him again until after you beat Leshy, which lets you see his footage of his face and find out how he got this strange game]].

** When you find Stinkbug, as they talk to you they almost call Stoat by their real name before catching themselves.

* FreezeFrameBonus: In the final video when the [=GameFuna=] representative shoots Luke, for one brief moment her head is replaced with that of...'''[[VideoGame/TheHex Sado]]'''.

* GenreRoulette: Per usual for a Daniel Mullins game. Act 1 is a deckbuilding RogueLike in the vein of ''VideoGame/SlayTheSpire'' combined with a Tabletop RPG. Act 2 switches to a 2D exploration game very similar to the first generation of ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' but with cards instead of monsters. Act 3 goes back to the 3D of Act 1, but ditches the RogueLike structure. Changes made to your deck are permanent and instead of requiring you to start over, losing a game drops all your money on the ground and teleports you to the last waypoint. There's also a mechanic where defeated enemies can respawn. It comes across as if a deckbuilding roguelike had a baby with ''VideoGame/DarkSouls''.

* HalfwayPlotSwitch: Though it's more like one-third and two-thirds plot switches. When you make it to the end of the game and beat Leshy, after some events play out, you finally access the "New Game" option at the title screen. And choosing this option has you start a new game with completely different, 8-bit graphics and 2 new types of cards to unlock. The roguelike deck building aspect is also removed, with you simply unlocking more and more cards to work with (giving you more flexibility for your deck, though you are required to have at least 20 at any time). This mode concludes with a switch back to 3D, but replacing the "Blood and Bones" mechanics of Leshy's game with the two new types you had just been introduced to, and plays more like an RPG than a roguelike or card collecting game.

** Should you manage to get much further into the game without dying than you were expected to, the next boss fight will suddenly glitch out on its second phase with words "TOO FAST, TOO SOON", and [[RocksFallEveryoneDies the boss's side of the board will be replaced with 8 overpowered grizzly cards]]. However, with the right tools and/or cards, [[LordBritishPostulate it IS possible to beat the grizzly wave regardless]] and [[SequenceBreaking make it all the way to the final boss on your first run]]. In Kaycee's Mod, one of the [[SelfImposedChallenge Self-Imposed Challenges]] unlocked during progression makes it so all bosses send out the grizzlies by default.

** It's implied InUniverse that this was how ''Inscryption'' is structured in order to keep the game replayable. The first act is the 8-bit world where the player challenges the Scrybes. While the player goes through the challenges, one of them inevitably gets ahold of data (why its OLD_DATA specifically is unknown) that allows them the power to take the game over, which causes the game to get a polygonal visual upgrade and an escape room set-up. All the Scrybes have 3d assets, two shown have ways to incorporate and/or trap the other Scrybes, etc. and beating the current GM resets the game in a loop. Unfortunately for P03, [[IronicHell he saved a version of the game where Leshy is the Game Master first, and it ends with their head humiliatingly ripped off after their moment of triumph]]. At the same time, it also [[NiceJobFixingItVillain contains evidence of GameFuna's murder of Luke Carder that's now widely spread in the form of video files]].

* MagicFloppyDisk: Supposedly, the entirety of Inscryption fits inside a single floppy disk. In real life, the game takes up well over 3GB of space, while floppy disks could only hold up to 2.8 MB of data.

** The Geck card has a meager one point in health and attack and no sigils. It's also the only card without a blood cost so it is adaptable to just about any situation. Put the Field Mice's sigil on it and you have a perpetual sacrifice machine with no drawbacks.

* MechanicalAnimals: The third boss, The Trapper, uses mechanical frog cards. When defeated, these cards turn into animal traps that do no attack damage, however they turn any creature in front of it when it dies into an animal pelt, killing it in the process and returning the pelt to the player's hand.

** Ouroboros' statline increasing every time it dies only applies for the run. Similarly, Death Cards are no longer created after a run, though Leshy will still play some generic Death Cards in his second phase.

* PhantomZonePicture: You get one made of you if you lose (which implies that you might be playing a ''succession'' of victims), and it's implied that some (if not all) of the cards are these - the [[StarterMon Stoat]] in particular stands out in your starting deck. It's eventually revealed that Leshy taking photos of people and animals seals them in cards. When you turn the tables on him and finally get the chance to look around his locked room you realize that sealing people in cards ''leaves a corpse behind.'' On top of that, this is how Leshy has trapped the other Scrybes in cards.

* {{Portmanteau}}: The three Masters of Magick have names that combine the colors of Mox they're associated with, being '''[[blue:Bl]][[green:eene]]''', '''[[green:G]][[cinnamon:oranj]]''' and '''[[cinnamon:Or]][[blue:lu]]'''.

** In-story, the Lucky Carder videos and presentation of Act 2 date the game to an undisclosed time in the 8 bit era.

* SecretHistory: The ARG and ''Kaycee's Mod'' reveal that during World War II the Nazis developed some form of doomsday machine capable of destroying half of Europe. Hitler hid the activation code in a set of Karnoffel cards he kept on him at all times, the so-called Karnoffel Code. During the Cold War, an American spy named Barry "Big Ear" Wilkinson located Hitler's corpse and encoded the Karnoffel Code onto floppy disk that was shipped back to the US, creating the OLD_DATA. [=GameFuna=] is a government front tasked with reviewing the code.
* SecretRoom: Hidden rooms can be found in Act 2 and 3. In the former this usually leads to additional lore, while in the latter the rooms primarily contain additional supplies.

* SenselessSacrifice: The Inspector and Smelter both sacrifice themselves to try and meet their master's demands for a worthy offering. However, he fails to even notice their offering and the Dredger is able to provide the offering which their master actually wanted without killing himself.

** Act 2 plays out very similarly to ''VideoGame/PokemonTradingCardGame'' in that you start by picking a certain themed deck, then travel to themed areas, completing minor puzzles in each place, defeating challengers using decks pertaining to each area's them, earning appropriately themed card packs from each defeated opponent, and eventually taking on and defeating each area's leader. It even uses a similar art style for the overworld areas.
** The Mothman line operates on similar mechanics to the Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth line in ''[[Franchise/{{YuGiOh}} Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'', both starting out as weak and unassuming moth cards that become near-unstoppable powerhouses if you keep them alive long enough (emphasis on ''if'').

*** Additionally, the card-summoning mechanic used by students of the Scrybe of Magicks is the Mox system, which involves cards called "(Gemstone) Mox" that are free to cast, allow you to power your other units, but take up space on the board. These are a reference to the Moxen, which are five out of the Power Nine -- the nine most powerful cards in ''Magic: The Gathering''. The Moxen in ''[=MtG=]'' work a lot like the Moxen found in ''Inscryption'', except they only pay for one mana a turn and... well, they don't block lanes, because ''[=MtG=]'' doesn't have lanes to block.

* ShootTheShaggyDog: At the end of the game, Grimora makes a final attempt to keep the OLD_DATA from spreading by deleting all of the game files -- including herself; her fellow Scrybes; and the souls of the dead that she's been preserving. Once the deletion is complete, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero the player is left face-to-face with the unharmed OLD_DATA with nothing left to prevent them from opening it]]. The attempt to kill P03 to keep the game from being uploaded appears to have also failed considering that in RealLife it is now widely available for purchase online.

* SpeaksInBinary: One of Luke's videos ends up corrupted at the very end, when he's about to ask his audience about something, with the closed captions only showing a binary sequence. Deciphering it gives the phrase "Karnoffel Code". Similarly, when the [=GameFuna=] representative that arrives in front of Luke's house, the video glitches when she introduces herself, decoding the binary reveals that her name is Amanda.

* StalkedByTheBell: Both your main deck and your squirrel deck have finite amounts of cards - fail to defeat the opponent before running out of cards in both decks, and 'Starvation' begins to settle in, represented as a series of creature cards that your opponent plays every following turn in any available slot. With every new Starvation card put in play, both its damage output and hit points increase by one, eventually doing enough damage to OneHitKill any card you can put down until they attack you directly, usually resulting in an instant round loss.

** The final showdown with Magnificus is his attempt at a grandiose ''Franchise/YuGiOh''-style duel, with 3D models of cards duking it out while the world's code crumbles around them, but the slapdash nature of his attempt is very obvious, as it usually just turns into the two of you mashing your cards against each other while the game bugs out, with the dramatic camera angles being more silly than cool. PlayedForDrama in some aspects in that Magnificus is scrambling to put something together at the last minute, and this absolute mess is ''all that's left'' for him to use; and even then it won't last long enough.

* {{Superboss}}: The most difficult boss battle in the game is also the only hidden one. The player must acquire the key from the Mycologist in Act 2 and then find the hidden entrance to their lab in Act 3. It's entirely possible to lose during the ''first round'' and it doesn't get much easier from there. That said, the reward is worth it as all of your played cards will merge their stats into a low-cost Mycobot card.

* TarotMotifs: The Trader is hidden away in Act 3, and finding her will allow for a tarot reading of 5 cards provided you have enough holo-pelts to trade for. The 5 cards she reads are The Fool (Barry Wilkinson, a key player in the AlternateRealityGame), The Empress (Kaycee), The Devil ([[VideoGame/PonyIsland Who else?]]), Death (a skeleton holding the Karnoffel Code in its pocket) and The Tower (a building with a blue triangle above it, heavily implied to be [[VideoGame/TheHex The Gameworks]]).
* TechnicianVersusPerformer: The contrast between the two archetypes is subtly shown in the differences between Leshy during Act 1 and P03 during Act 3 when it comes to being the "Game Master" and narrating the "game". Leshy goes out of his way to interpret his characters in a dramatic and often lore-wise fitting tone, including in the way he plays while interpreting them, even if this puts him at a disadvantage. The important thing for him is to give a dramatic show to the player, and even when he pulls all the stops and goes for the win, he still tries to do so in a way that enhances his "narrative", as shown when he takes a picture of the moon to use as a card. In comparison, P03 would rather think of effective strategies and give the player a challenge than telling a story, best shown when, at the start of Act 3, it quickly invents an ExcusePlot for the players to go on its quest to to reach "Ascension" and creates small tidbits for "Botopia" while you play, preferring to focus more on gameplay depth than making a narrative. It frequently goes out of character to either explain new rules to the game or because it made a mistake while narrating something. It even lampshades it when you reach the place where Leshy's cabin was before it reconstructed the area around its visage.

** The OLD_DATA, whatever it may be, is something the characters in the ''Inscryption'' game are too scared to talk about, and for which the company that made the game is willing to kill over. Snippets of what may be the OLD_DATA are shown sporadically - photographs of a woman, a page from the passport of a man, a series of photographs of a brother and sister, and possibly fragmented video footage of Luke Carder playing with a scale from the ''Inscryption'' game.
** If you give the Bone Lord an offering in Act 2, he'll give you a key that'll unlock a secret room in Act 3. Should you find and enter this room, Bone Lord agrees to tell you what he knows about OLD_DATA... on the condition that Luke not record it. The screen goes dark, and when the recording resumes, [[NothingIsScarier whatever Bone Lord told Luke is so distressing that even]] [[KillerGameMaster P03]] [[EvenEvilHasStandards is extremely unnerved.]]

* TricksterMentor: Your captor has shades of this. They force a loss on you in the tutorial to introduce the lives mechanic on you. They claim their boss battles are a true test of skill, and as such, reduce your lives to one (though they do reimburse you with a pretty strong card) however, should you lose, all that happens is you start again, with a stronger deck.

* UndesirablePrize: After defeating Leshy he presents you with a prize to celebrate your victory: A plate of raw, stinking meat with a single birthday candle stuck in it.

** In Act 3 you're denied any sort of final fight with P03. Instead the game abruptly ends once you defeat the final Uberbot and P03 is killed in a cutscene without any involvement from the player.

* VideoGameCaringPotential: During the G0lly boss fight in Act 3, you are tasked with creating a custom card for another player currently playing the same fight. If you make a good card that helps them win the fight you will instantly win as well. Alternatively, if no other player can be found, you will be given the card instead. In either case, it's in your best interests to make something good rather than trying to troll other players with a joke card.

** The Archivist allows you to weight the scale with files from your computer (with larger filesizes carrying more weight) in her first phase. In the second phase, she creates a card out of one of your files that is stronger based on its age... but [[DeletionAsPunishment if it's destroyed, it will be deleted from your hard drive]]. It isn't actually; see DeletionAsPunishment for details.

** Both of these weaknesses have been patched in Kaycee's Mod

The primary gameplay is a CardBattleGame where you embark on a tablelop RPG-like adventure, moving space-to-space on a map while collecting cards you will use to battle. Almost each card requires you to sacrifice at least one of your cards to power them up before they can be played- with the exception of the Squirrel cards, which cannot attack and are your main sacrifice fodder. Both you and your enemy attack either other's cards or, if there is nothing in the way, the opponent themselves, which will tip the scales one way or the other- victory is achieved if you tip your opponent's scale all the way down and vice versa. You will collect a variety of cards with a variety of stats and sigils- special rules the card follows- and space types that can be used to do things like get items, power up cards, or trade cards.

** In the third act, you later get into a similar situation, but this time with P03 after its takeover of the game instead of Leshy. Only this time it's ''handcuffed you to the table.''

* BigBadEnsemble: At first, it seems that the Game Master is the sole villain as the one running the titular DeadlyGame and killing you if you lose. But Leshy is just one of the four Scrybes- the other three being Grimora, Magnificus, and P03- and all of them are competing with each other to gain control of the game and carry out their nefarious agendas, with Leshy and P03 getting the most focus.
* BigBadFriend: The Stoat/P03 is one of the first friendly faces you see, but it becomes the final BigBad rather than risk having its position as a Scrybe usurped by you. Even in its version of the game, it's relatively more jocular and friendly with you - but also literally chains you to the table until it needs you to get something.

* BloodMagic: While technically no actual blood is involved, one of the main mechanics is sacrificing cards on the field for blood in order to play better cards (spending said blood in the process). It turns out this is only one of four card types, but since it's the one that your opponent Leshy specializes in, it's what you start with. After your first run ends, you also start unlocking bone cards which are a sort of indirect form of Blood Magic (your cards must die to gain currency used to summon other cards). The other two card types that don't unlock until the second half aren't this at all.

** Magnificus seems to be fond of this, going by the state his pupils are in; Goobert was melted into a pile of sludge, while Amber was reduced to a still-conscious head on a pike. Solving the console ARG also indicates that the previous Ruby Mage was subjected to this as well, a "trial" involving his limbs being "twisted and morphed"—but he actually [[TooKinkyToTorture enjoyed it]].

** While it's not the end of the game just yet, Leshy's final duel mirrors his first, with the candles, the scale and the bell disappearing in the opposite order they were introduced. Then as the Game Master himself bids farewell, the scene fades to black on the table, as empty as it was when the game began.

** The cards you start your deck with at the beginning of every round--namely, the talking Scrybe cards in addition to the Bullfrog--are all low cost (aside from the regular wolf) with decent stats, and you're guaranteed to have them in every round. This makes them very easy to find use of, and there are a lot of opportunities to make them stronger through campfires or adding sigils since you have them in your deck for the longest.

** ''Kaycee's Mod'' has a number of these, by virtue of the fact that most of the game-breakingly powerful features are turned off. A lot of wacky strategies that would have blown through act 1 are either heavily nerfed or useless here. Pack Rats are pretty much a must have for any deck because while they have pretty poor health and damage they give you a random item upon placement, which depending on the challenge modifiers may basically be ''required to win the game''.

** Your opponent is constant shadow, but his eyes are always plainly visible.

* ChekhovsGun: In the cabin there is a hammer bolted to the wall so it cannot be moved. Later in the game you are given the hammer to remove cards from your playing field when not using Leshy's sacrifice mechanic.
* {{Chiptune}}: All of act two uses this style of music, in order to fit with the 8 bit aesthetic. Leshy’s theme is even remixed to better fit the tone of this section.

** In Act 3, getting a tarot reading from the Trader and choosing The Tower will have her mention an isoceles triangle and a blue man being all that she remembers of their initial creation. She is heavily implied to be referring to The Gameworks and Irving from ''The Hex''.

* CycleOfHurting: During the Act 3 boss in Magnificus's realm, you are told to create rules that will be followed (such as whenever you take your turn, an enemy is shielded, whenever you draw a card, you automatically play a card, etc etc.) If you set one rule as "Whenever a card dies, summon a minion" and another rule as "Whenever a card dies, a random card takes 5 damage" you can very easily enter a cycle where a minion dies and then another minion spawns right after, leading to an endless loop. Soon after this happens, the game master will step in and disable one of the rules, letting the game continue.

* DeathAsGameMechanic: If you lose a run, you get to create a death card, combining the cost, stats, and sigils of different cards in your deck, before your photo is taken and you are turned into a card. This card will be available in future runs- and [[HoistByHisOwnPetard as Leshy's cards in his second phase]].
* {{Deconstruction}}: Of the "haunted videogame" Creepypasta trope, and the assumption with haunted videogame stories that the game is evil by default. After all, it makes for a much more interesting story if the game is possessed by an evil force, but the world of ''Inscryption'' is actually quite pleasant. Leshy and the other three Scrybes know there's no way to actually ''harm'' the player from the confines of their game, which is why the cabin sequence is so intense and dark -- Leshy is just putting on a good show and trying to motivate the player into beating him. Even P03 just wants to live its life outside the confines of the glitchy, unfinished prison that is ''Inscryption''. That said, there is evidence of some sort of conspiracy at [=GameFuna=] hidden within the game's files, knowledge of which gets Luke killed when he plans to reveal it to the world. And the actual ''haunting'' is in the end wholly separate from the rest of the game world, and the characters are just as terrified of the entity responsible as the player should be, with one willing to delete everything (including themselves) just for a shot at taking it out.
* DeletionAsPunishment: In Act 3, during the Archivist boss fight, you are asked to pick a file from your computer (an actual file from your computer), preferably your oldest and dearest file, whatever that is. Whatever file you pick will have a card made from it (the older the file, the stronger the card). You are warned however that if the card is destroyed, the associated file will be deleted. If said card ''is'' killed and you check where the file was located, you'll find a .txt file which states that the boss tried to delete your file but wasn't able to, and asks you to be fair and delete it yourself. Doing it nets you an achievement.

** The Fledgling sigil causes cards to evolve into a stronger form after one turn, but naturally only appears on animals such as Wolf Pup and Strange Larva. Using a sacrifice or totem to give this to adult animals typically just adds "Elder" to the name but there are also several unique name changes. For example, Child 13 becomes Child 14, Alpha becomes Omega, Opossum becomes Awesome Opossum, and the Dam becomes [[PunnyName God Dam]].

** During the final battle with P03 in Act 2 he will play a glitched card which on his first turn will trigger the transition to Act 3. The card has an absurd amount of health, but if you ''do'' manage to kill it, he'll just play another one.

** Whenever Leshy encounters one of the changes Kaycee has made as one of her challenges for the first time (e.g., making it so that bosses no longer reward rare cards) he'll remark on it.
** If you've fused several pelts together via the Mycologist then the trader will offer fused creatures in exchange for it.

*** Reaching the Mycologists without any duplicates will result in them handing you duplicate of something in your deck for next time.

* DoomsdayDevice: During World War II the Nazis constructed a device capable of wiping out half of Europe on activation. The device still exists and the Karnoffel Code stored in OLD_DATA is its activation sequence.
* DoorToBefore: Three of the routes in Act 3 have the player forced to take a detour with combat encounters due to a roadblock. After completing the detour, an NPC will remove the roadblock allowing the encounters to be skipped in the future.

* DownerEnding: Grimora successfully destroys the game's files after she, Leshy and Magnificus put a violent end to P03's takeover, and you're left playing one last meaningless game with each of the three of them as the world dies around them. Meanwhile, Luke sees the AwfulTruth in its remains, having spent the real-world sections of the story increasingly obsessed over some dark secret at the core of its development and the company behind it, and is shot in his own home as he tries to bring it to light. Also, P03 survived his beheading and managed to accomplish his plan after all.

** Your lives are represented by flames on a candlestick - two to start with, three if you complete a cabin puzzle. Reaching a boss with two candles lit will result in Leshy snuffing one out and giving you the Smoke as a free card. ''Kaycee's Mod'' limits you to just two candles, with a challenge modifier cutting it down to just one.

* EarlyGameHell: In each Act you start over from scratch, and the start of Act 3 is particularly challenging. You are forced to use the energy mechanic of P03's deck style, and most of your starting cards are rather weak. Unlike the first act, you don't get to try to build a new deck every time you die, you keep the same deck with you as it grows and evolves for the entire chapter meaning if you hit a difficult fight, your only option is to either explore elsewhere or modify your strategies. Once you defeat your first boss, it does become easier as for every boss you defeat, you can give your Empty Vessels a new passive ability, making them much more usable.

** Should you stab your eye out with the Special Dagger and replace it with the goats eye in Leshy's box, the Black Goat card will have its art change to become oddly cute, with it blushing, having puppy-dog eyes, the sigil on its forehead replaced with a heart, and its lower body seemingly becoming anthropomorphic and wearing a bra.

** Also in-universe after P03 takes over. You are someone in the post-apocalyptic world of Botopia- after making up the name "Uberbots" on the spot, you are told your mission is to defeat all four and activate the "Great Transcendence." Even gets lampshaded a bit by it saying that it doesn't matter what it is; you want it. Turns out it's because you've had a thin veneer of a plot put together to put the finishing touches on its own grand plan to upload the game.

** When you first start the game you hear a guy offscreen talk like he's starting up a new game before the sounds of an old-fashioned game booting up and you enter the main menu. That's not just a cute little meta one-off: This is Luke, [[FramingDevice the guy you are playing as, right as he starts the game ''Inscryption''. You won't be hearing him again until after you beat Leshy, which lets you see his footage of his face and find out how he got this strange game]].

** The Mycologist will fuse any two duplicate cards into one, doubling its attack and health. They become able to double the effect of the original's sigils in Act 2. In Act 3 they can now fuse any two cards together and beating them in battle causes them to fuse all the cards currently on your side of the board, regardless of type, and give the result to you as a "Mycobot" with the combined stats and sigils of the original cards.

%%* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: The theme of both the story and gameplay is "sacrifice." (ZCE- how is it the theme?)
* GameplayGrading: At the end of a Kaycee's Mod run, the game will give you a stat summary of your run including how many misplays you made. The game isn't actually identifying misplays; you have a random chance of getting a "misplay" each turn.
* GatheringSteam: The Ouroboros card starts with a reasonable 2/2 stat spread but each time it's killed both stats go up by one, ''permanently''. This becomes especially broken in Act 2 with use of the Training Dummy.

* HeKnowsTooMuch: The fate of Luke Carder, who made the mistake sending an inquiry about the ''Inscryption'' game to [=GameFuna=], the creators of the game, who, in turn, send an employee named Amanda to kill him and take the disc back. This is also hinted to be the case for one of the developers, Kaycee Hobbes, who allegedly perished in a fire while conducting quality control for the unfinished game. Her cards, with the coordinates to a cache containing the only copy of ''Inscryption'', are what set Luke on his path.
* HeadsIWinTailsYouLose: If you beat the first round of certain bosses before you've continued the story enough, the game bugs out for a second before spawning a full two rows of anti-air bears that will almost certainly destroy your run the next round, forcing you to start a new run and continue the storyline. Of course if you lose, you just lose. [[TakeAThirdOption You can also still beat the boss in this state with clever item usage or a really lucky setup, at which point the game will simply continue as normal]].

** A fairly innocuous example happens early on, where, due to the way the cards have been dealt, it's impossible to win--not blatantly so, but your opponent's cards happen to be too strong and coming out too quickly for you to hold them off with the cards you have at that point.[[note]]Should you manage to create a situation where you would win anyway on your first turn (possible through the use of items), a wall of Grizzlies will appear on the opposing side of the board upon ringing the bell, all but ensuring your loss.[[/note]] This serves as your introduction to the game's lives system.

** It's implied InUniverse that this was how ''Inscryption'' is structured in order to keep the game replayable. The first act is the 8-bit world where the player challenges the Scrybes. While the player goes through the challenges, one of them inevitably gets ahold of data (why its OLD_DATA specifically is unknown) that allows them the power to take the game over, which causes the game to get a polygonal visual upgrade and an escape room set-up. All the Scrybes have 3d assets, two shown have ways to incorporate and/or trap the other Scrybes, etc. and beating the current GM resets the game in a loop. Unfortunately for P03 [[IronicHell he saved a version of the game where Leshy is the Game Master first, and it ends with their head humiliatingly ripped off after their moment of triumph.]] At the same time it also [[NiceJobFixingItVillain contains evidence of GameFuna's murder of Luke Carder that's now widely spread in the form of video files.]]

* IgnoredEpiphany: As his plan reaches its final stage P03 admits he kind of enjoyed playing a game with you, but he carries on acting condescending toward the player and proceeds with his Transcendence plan.

** Also implied by the fact that "player" cards, that you normally make when you've lost against the captor, can appear that you haven't actually made yourself, implying the cycle has been going on longer than you've been playing. Confirmed when you finally beat them but still end up in that closet they always take you to when you lose. If you look to your right from where you start, you can see a large pile of corpses that are there even if you manage to get a win in only a few runs. Becomes a minor ChekhovsGunman in Act 2, when one of the pre-made cards (Kaycee) shows up as an undead acolytes of the Death Scrybe whose tombstone is used in a puzzle, and a MAJOR ChekhovsGunman in Act 3, when it's learned that Kaycee was named after a now-deceased [=GameFuna=] employee that formerly owned the card packs that led Luke to the game.

* ItIsDehumanizing: May be at play, barring a potential typo in dialogue. While for the majority of the game P03 is referred to with it/its, his workers--who are also robots, and idolize him--refer to him with he/him; everyone who uses it/its is a non-robot who thinks poorly of him, actively wants him dead, or both. This is very easy to read as [[JustAMachine malicious dehumanization]]. It also makes the scene where he is repeatedly referred to as 'it' by the people who are planning his murder particularly uncomfortable.

* LeaveTheCameraRunning: After Luke gets shot, you get to watch him bleed out on the floor in first person for about thirty seconds. Not much else happens on screen during this time.

* TheLostWoods: The game master's aesthetic and card game revolves around a rustic, untamed wilderness, sometimes mixed with GrimUpNorth. Specifically, the game seems heavily based on North American forests, with coyotes, prospectors, and wooden totems of animals. Several of the rare cards, including the Urayuli and Ijiraq, are based on folklore from Native American cultures in northern Canada and Alaska. There is also a rare [[FearsomeCrittersOfAmericanFolklore Hodag]] card. What is odd about this is that Leshy is a slavic name, after a woodland creature of Slavic folklore.

* ContinuityNod: Game mechanics and commentary in Act 2 make it clear that the eye needed to complete Act 1 originally belonged to Magnificus.

* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Your opponent [[NotPlayingFairWithResources does not have to make sacrifices to play cards like you do]]. He ''does'', however, still have a limited deck... [[ZigZaggingTrope but he also doesn't suffer from Starvation cards when he runs out like you do]]. This applies to your opponents in Acts 2 and 3 as well.

** In Act 3, getting a tarot reading from the Trader and choosing The Tower will have her mention an isoceles triangle and a blue man being all that she remembers of their initial creation. She is heavily implied to be referring to The Gameworks and Irving from ''The Hex''.

* BodyHorror: Respawn enough times in the cabin, and the Stoat, Stinkbug, and Stunted Wolf all start to look extremely... off, deformed in strange ways compared to their previously on-style animal cards. Though this is a subversion, really, in that they're looking more like ''themselves'' before their ForcedTransformation into cards.

* CutscenePowerToTheMax: The group of starving, desperate survivors can tear apart any creature if their hunger gets the better of them. Not even bears, great white sharks, and cryptids are safe.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: You will quickly notice that [[MyRulesAreNotYourRules your opponent does not obey the same rules about needing to pay sacrifices to play cards]]. This also applies to your opponents in Acts 2 and 3, with P03 frequently playing high-energy cards on turn 1.

*** Also during the ending sequence, Magnificus tells Luke that they will both be meeting their makers soon.