Real Deal
I was watching a stream of the card game Inscryption the other day. Leshy, the mysterious game master, had just grabbed a mask of a grotesque angler fisherman. “You give me good fish,” he said menacingly before laying out a card for his opponent. As foreboding music played in the background, Leshy and the player pitted their intricately designed cards against each other in a long battle until the player finally achieved victory.
Except I wasn’t watching the Inscryption video game. Instead, two actual humans were playing the card game from the video game using real props and an elaborate streaming setup. And they’re not the only ones; just months after the game’s October 2021 release, there’s already a growing community putting their efforts into bringing the digital card game to life.
First, a brief overview of Inscryption, or more precisely, its first act, which is what a lot of the IRL community is trying to replicate. You begin the game in what appears to be a dimly lit wooden room. Leshy, who serves as a Dungeons & Dragons-like game master, sits across the table, and most of the time, you can see only his eyes. He plays the game with you, weaving a tale for your journey, laying out maps with branching paths, and even taking on the roles of different characters using masks. The game has a lot of strategy, and once you grasp the rules, it’s quite fun. But there’s a dark undertone to it all, as one of the primary mechanics is sacrificing your cards so you can play others.
The thing is, there are some aspects of Inscryption that work best because it is a video game. The number representing health on each card ticks down as opponents attack, which isn’t something you can easily do with a physical card. One item, a pair of
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