 can tell you much about inscription. That it is part card game, that it has escape room elements, that it has a whole metal layer that's clever enough to engage people on the internet for months on end. But you've already heard of that. So instead I'll concentrate on the first and the last of the game's three acts and I'll contrast them to one another. But first, what is inscription about? This game is about fear. Not just one type of fear either, but two and two very special ones at that. This first section of the game awakens the deepest paranoia to begin with. You find yourself in a cabin, sitting against an old man reclining in the shadows. He is bearded, his hair is unkempt. There is something of the forest in him and of madness also. Every time he speaks his eyes turn into spirals. The forest cabin holds a mystery in its every nook and cranny. Your opponent, for that is one the mystery man is, is impatient as he teaches you the basics of this game before you. It is gruesome, it is cruel to the point of savagery, but then survival is worth an arm and leg and I. Unless she is all too happy to let you pay the price before, but we'll get there soon enough. You play the game and the game is reaching the cabin within which you play the game and defeating the one within the cabin. It's not difficult to figure out all things considered, but while the mood the old man sets, every point of your journey is shrouded in a slow-moving sense of dread. You're in the forest and you're lost utterly completely lost all fear that and for good reason. Times were if you went wandering off in a forest you chanced never returning. Think of Schwarzwald, the black forest of Europe. Why do you think all those grisly German fairytales were given birth? They are beasts in the woods and bandits and monsters. One of them won't let you leave. You have no choice. No choice, but to keep playing. And then finally, inevitably, you lose to him. That's when he takes a picture of you for his collection, leering with joy as the photograph falls to the cracks and his arms reach out at you. Snuff you out in true horror film fashion. Except it doesn't end there, not for you. You play again. You learn his name. You, the player, note little by little that he is not clueless as to the fact that it is you playing against him time and again. But the tension does not let up, unless he has many, many masks before he reveals his face. Little by little, you tear them apart. You defeat him. Perhaps you do so more than once. You become better at the grisly game of sacrifice before you. Eventually, you master your fear. You make allies. And you finally trick him. You return things to how they are supposed to be. It doesn't last. There you are again. It's not Leshichu's before you, but Po3. What waits atop his holographic board is frightening in an altogether different way from the ancient horrors in the face of the forest. A wasteland of optimisation lays before you. There is no art history, no craft, no originality. Instead, there's enhancements, accumulation, checkpoints, and more. The movement of cogs and mechanisms of assembly lines and conveyor belts. Its repetition, familiar beats, remastered, thrown a fresh coat of neon collared paint on, almost a fear of the uncanny valley. Like that first time you were seeing Star Wars Rogue One on the screen and suddenly there came out a gloriously animated Grand Moff Tarkin moving, speaking, just as you remembered him. Only. Not quite. Something about emotions. Not quite right. Po3 doesn't wear masks the way Leshichu does. He's subsumed entirely by the simulations he runs. It's simulacra, pure and simple, not a copy but truth in its own right. Hyperalty to quote the French postmodern critic Jean Baudrillard. There's something frightening about that too. Everywhere you look you find differences between Leshichu and Po3. With Leshichu you had an embodied experience. Everything was visceral. It was the kind of experience that would play amazing on a VR headset for the sheer immersion factor of it. With Po3 you are very consciously playing a game. A game that demands you play in a specific way. Not mechanically so much as in a narrative sense. Following Po3's lead. As shown in all the way in which your choices are different in Act 3 from the way they were in Act 1. In a way inscription is the best comment on AI-powered chatbots there is. And it came out over a year before chat GPT sent every large journalistic outlet into a spiral of alarmist nonsense about artificial intelligence with feelings. Let me tell you how I really feel about it. But another time. Po3 is driven by the desire to win. His last moments see him gloating. Much as your worst friend from high school that petty guy in class you just knew was overcompensating for something. In contrast Leshichu as you come to learn by games and is driven by love of the sport. All he wishes to do the last time you meet him is to play another game. Even the music reflects as much. Listen to that card cabin first then to its reprise. All the sharp edges are sanded away. What is left is melancholy sadness. The kind that threatens to pierce straight through your heart. And it does. Because while inscription is about fear it is about so much more too. No piece of art is about just one thing. What the game's meaning is too often in the eye of the beholder. Tell me. What was inscription about for you? In inscription is not all that old and I didn't know exactly what to do with it because I played it about a year and three four months ago and I've wanted to talk about it in all that time. This was me looking back on my time with the game. I'm not following the structure of a review so much as working with the traces that inscription left in my mind. And sure enough if you're lucky enough to have played inscription it really does have that way of leaving a trace. This is the kind of game you might want to play for yourselves. I hope my love for it shines through in the video you have just seen. If you stuck around this long thank you very much. If you enjoyed this video, if you would enjoy stuff like this more in the future let me know. Tell me what you thought in the comments down below, press that like button, feel free to dislike it if you did, and don't forget to subscribe. Your subscriptions keep me going because it's really a nice feeling to know that someone's willing to watch not just one video but several of them. I'll see you next time. I'm Philip Magnus. Bye!