Inscryption: From a Game Jam Entry to IGF and GDC Game of the Year
Daniel Mullins made a tiny card game for a jam with the theme 'sacrifices must be made'. Three years later it was the most decorated indie game of its year. How a free itch.io prototype became Inscryption.
You wake up in a dark cabin. Across a wooden table, a pair of glowing eyes watches you from the shadows. A deck of cards slides towards you. To play your strongest creatures, you will have to sacrifice weaker ones. And if you lose, something very bad happens. That is the opening of Inscryption, and it is only the start of how strange this game gets.
Inscryption was created by Daniel Mullins and his studio Daniel Mullins Games, published by Devolver Digital, and released on 19 October 2021. It sold more than a million copies by January 2022, won Game of the Year at the Game Developers Choice Awards, and took the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2022 IGF along with three other awards.
Born in a game jam
Inscryption began as Sacrifices Must Be Made, a small entry to Ludum Dare 43 in 2018, one of the world's best-known game jams, where developers build a game from scratch around a theme in a matter of days. That year's theme was "sacrifices must be made", and Mullins built a creepy little card game around it, inspired by the sacrifice mechanic in Magic: The Gathering.
He released the prototype free on itch.io on 31 December 2018. Players loved it, and Mullins, who had just finished his previous game, The Hex, decided to expand it into something much bigger.
More than a card game
Describing Inscryption fully would spoil it. What we can say is that it is a roguelike deckbuilder for its first stretch, a very good one, and then it becomes something else, then something else again. Along the way it keeps playing with the idea of a game that is hiding things from you.
That restlessness is why it won so much. It works as a strategy game, a horror game and a mystery, and it trusts players to follow it wherever it goes. Composer Jonah Senzel's score, built in Unity alongside the rest of the game, keeps the dread simmering throughout.
An awards sweep
Inscryption's trophy haul is one of the largest for any indie game of the 2020s:
- IGF 2022: Seumas McNally Grand Prize, plus Excellence in Design, Narrative and Audio.
- Game Developers Choice Awards: Game of the Year.
- BAFTA Games Awards: Game Design.
- The Game Awards 2021: nominated for Best Independent Game and Best Sim/Strategy Game.
- Polygon named it the best game of 2021.
It holds a Metacritic score of 85 on PC and 87 on PlayStation 5.
Why it matters
Inscryption is the best argument we know for game jams. A quick jam experiment, shared for free, told Mullins there was something there, and he followed it. Many of the indie games we cover started as small, quick prototypes; few grew this far. It also shows the value of listening: Mullins did not set out to make a big game, he let players' reaction to a free experiment tell him which idea deserved years of his life.
Where to play
Inscryption is on PC, Mac and Linux (Steam), PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S and Nintendo Switch. Go in knowing as little as possible. For another prototype-to-classic story, read about Celeste (here), or see where Inscryption sits among the IGF's Grand Prize winners.