Game Theory: DANGER! Don't Play This Game! (Inscryption)

you're opening a pack of trading cards inside are coordinates to a secret location out in the woods it's nearby so you go you dig and you find a simple white box buried under layers of soil inside it is a disk with mysterious words scrawled across the label inscription what follows is a deadly card game with your life and the fate of the world hang in the balance the only thing missing is a gen 1 holographic stoat it is by all estimations the best indie title of 2021 the only thing is don't play it seriously don't do it do not play this game confused well to understand why let's go on a journey hello internet welcome to game theory the show that also requires a small sacrifice to summon a few minutes of your precious watch time today we're talking about the latest game to come out of the insane mind of daniel mullins for those of you who aren't familiar with his work daniel was the brilliant game designer behind 2016's absolutely insane pony island look at that skill i did not kill jesus and i've been a huge fan of his work ever since and now his latest game inscription is all over the internet being hailed is one of if not the best game of 2021 and i've played it i've enjoyed it it is fantastic but i'm also here to tell you that you should not play it because doing so might just doom the entire world sound like an over-the-top exaggeration will allow me to explain and be warned there'll be spoilers ahead as soon as you boot up the game for the first time the story begins but not in the way that you'd expect we first hear a mysterious voice that says okay time to figure out what's on this thing then to make things even weirder despite having never played it before the option for new game is grayed out our only option is to select continue so we do that and we meet a mysterious figure that greets us by saying perhaps you've forgotten how this game is played allow me to remind you immediately this set off theorist alarms in my head to me this implies that before we got hold of the game someone else had already begun the story similar to what we saw recently in another game andy's apple farm could there be some secret lore hidden here as we piece together the mysterious backstory of the game and who played it before i think so what follows is a roguelike deck building game where cards require sacrifices to summon all while this guy takes on the role of dungeon master donning different masks to simulate the various characters that you encounter on your journey gotta say as a theater kid i appreciate the commitment to the bit you play progressively more difficult rounds against each other earning teeth via your card's attacks to add to a scale on the side of the table tip the scale far enough to one side and you win so it's a tabletop game a la hearthstone right what's the big deal here well if you play long enough there is so much more lurking under the surface first off the cards start talking to you even remembering the times that you sacrifice them in battle which is certainly off-putting and guilt-inducing but we also got to be honest here if they weren't such useless cards i wouldn't be sacrificing them as much stoats and you'll be doing a lot of sacrificing because the game eventually gets real hard in fact there are times when it seems like the game will do everything in its power to make you fail when that happens you get the chance to find a death card in your next playthrough but while most other cards are based on woodland creatures like rabbits bats and a sassy stout these death cards feature you or at least a past iteration of you lose the game and the dungeon master leshi uses his camera to immortalize you as a card if you do manage to win on any given playthrough you might think that it's suddenly time to turn the tables this time you're gonna be the one to pick up that camera point it at leschy push the button to snap the photo and nothing turns out it's not the camera that's magical but the film that turns people into cards the solution to this problem lies not in the heart of the cards but rather in leshi's cabin see the cards are only half the game the other half involves us exploring the cabin where the game takes place while you play the card game you'll discover clues that help you to unlock and obtain special items including another sentient card the stink bug and a stabby boy yep as it turns out you can bring a knife to a card fight but the target for the knife isn't the dungeon master but rather yourself you can use the knife to pluck out one of your eyeballs which adds a large amount of weight to the scales fortunately our dungeon master is all about the joy of the game and as losing an eye will diminish this joy he actually offers you a spare from his eyeball box which is a thing that he has just laying around however one of these eyes is not like the other and upon plucking it into your head you suddenly start to see things that you couldn't before messages and clues written in invisible ink which show us exactly how to open the various locks hidden throughout the cabin this leads us to a roll of film and a third talking card the one-eyed stunted wolf wonder what happened to his other oh i get it what's interesting is that these talking cards aren't exactly friendly to each other let alone with our dungeon master not only that but they change appearances throughout the game the stoat starts to look less like a woodland weasel and more like a creature with a mechanical head and the card that begins as a stink bug starts to take on the appearance of an old woman it's certainly strange but we don't have a lot of time to think about it because with our film in hand it's time to did a duel we sit down at leschy's table one final time proceed to the end of his board and beat him but as we deliver the final blow we hear a familiar voice oh my did i just i think i just made him it's the same voice from the beginning of the game suddenly we're ripped out of the gameplay revealing that what we've been seeing all along was actually just a video recording we aren't actually playing the game but rather we're playing as someone playing the game this mystery voice man you gotta love that about indie games if it isn't three layers of meta within the first couple hours of your gameplay are you truly playing an indie game that voice belongs to a guy named luke carter a humble card game aficionado and aspiring youtuber because of course he wants to be a youtuber hey there card gamers i'm the lucky carter and this is a vintage pack opening video i've got four packs of inscription next thing you know he's gonna try to start a podcast and box against floyd mayweather but what our little logan paul wannabe has in his hands is no ordinary pack of cards inside one of them is something unusual a set of coordinates 49 degrees north 123 degrees west and like a true theorist luke goes and visits the coordinates on the map where he finds an old floppy disk with a simple handwritten label ben drowned oh sorry sorry uh wrong creepypasta it's actually labeled inscription that's the name of the movie game actually but you're close anyway in the words of another game franchise some things are best left forgotten for now luke probably should have left that disc buried though because by digging it up he starts to attract the unwanted attention of game funa the game's creators in fact representatives start visiting his house blockages for a game called inscription i was told he came buy a copy of it somehow listen uh how do you know where i live exactly and how did you get past the side gate it's locked like any good youtuber luke films at all except the video and audio periodically glitch leaving the subtitles alone to reveal the truth that's binary for amanda in case you were wondering and what's amanda looking for well that's hidden in another glitch did anyone ever play an inscription and video game see that more binary translating it gets me the karnaufl code which after a quick google search is just some old german card game now it would be an odd easter egg on its own but the game actually tells us more or i suppose i should say the game within the game see if you jump back into inscription after defeating the dungeon master you grab the camera and use the magical film that you found earlier to turn him into a card this suddenly unlocks the new game button that was missing from the opening menu now we can finally start this thing from the beginning the real beginning and you see this is where things start to get real trippy because this new game is literally exactly that a new game in a completely different graphical style immediately we're told about four characters known as the scribes who have different ways of creating cards there's the old woman gremora who uses her quill to inscribe the epitaphs of the dead p03 a robot who uses a particle scanner to create cards as well as magnificus who used his brush to paint his wizard pupils and if all three of these look familiar well that's because there were three talking cards the stink bug the stoat and the stunted wolf from earlier on in the playthrough how did this happen well it's all thanks to the fourth scribe leshi who uses his camera to capture the others just like he would use it on us at the end of each game that we lose and just like game funa out in the real world the characters in the game are also looking for something leshi has the angler plumbing the depths for some long forgotten relic p03 has the dredger digging through the archives trying to find something equally ancient something named the old data we learned from this guy late in the game about this mysterious data and how it carries with it the carnoval code there's that phrase again which is apparently something like a virus one that was responsible for giving these four scribes their sentience that's right the characters in the game are alive or at least they want to be when leshi is finally defeated by the player p03 remarks that quote we would have been even sooner if the disc wasn't lost so not only is p03 aware that he's a character in a game but he's aware that the disc that they were on was lost out in the woods quote again dearest grimora i believe p03's plot may go far past the extent of a common power grab indeed this great transcendence will have catastrophic and unpredictable results great transcendence you say there magnificus a video game character trying to break out into real life what you don't say anyway by the end of the game p03's great transcendence is thwarted and the game inscription gets deleted off the disk eventually all that remains is you and the old data with an npc casually dropping the recommendation that you do not access it so you know of course i'ma access it old data begins unzipping flooding the screen with redacted images whatever it is it's enough to terrify luke into ripping the disk from his drive and smashing it with a hammer speaking of luke he calls a journalist hoping to expose the truth about game funa and the terrible secrets that he just uncovered but he's interrupted by the arrival of amanda who ensures that luke is taken out before telling the rest of his story and before reminding us to like comment and subscribe so that's the base story but there's still a lot of missing pieces here what is the old data and how did it get onto this disk but what exactly the old data is is still a bit unclear but it was clearly powerful stuff powerful enough to grant sentience to game entities and bring oblivion to the rest of the world we know based on the game's ending that it can't be deleted we also know it's something incriminating enough that game funa were willing to kill in order to get it back and all of it is tied to a girl named casey you see in act three of the game we meet a figure that offers us a rare card one named casey who we're told is the creator of inscription according to the in-game dialogue she also learned a lot about the old data this moment alone was enough to get my fearst senses a tingling but we actually hear mention of her two other times in the game as a death card in part one as well as a person who got hit by ice in part two's bone game luke also stumbles across her name during his investigation of the disc listen i was at your garage sale the other day and i they were your daughters would it be possible for me to speak with her oh no i'm so sorry her name was casey that's a lovely name sorry what she worked for inscription and just like that the puzzle pieces start to come together this character casey is the one who buried the game out in the woods but something seems to have happened to her oh my god game developer casey hobbs died from fire related complications she died in a fire which in a dark twist ties directly to something that we see in the game in part three a bot named casey offers to clear up some ice that blocks a road using fire p03 thinks that this is funny proven just how dark and twisted this sadistic stoat robot actually is so based on everything that we learned about casey it seems like all of our actions were meant to keep the old data locked away and hidden because remember it can't be deleted not even when you have full file control first she buried the old data under the game inscription in order to hide it away with the game acting as a sort of seal then she buried the physical disk out in the woods but not only that she found a way to soft lock inscription so that the scribes wouldn't be able to break the seal on the old data we know that the scribes are engaged in a perpetual turf war constantly vying against each other for power so when you think about it putting leshi in charge was actually the smartest thing that casey could have done we know firsthand that just leaving the disc in a new game state would be unstable one of the scribes would be able to make a grab for power eventually if gramora got control she might use it to free herself from the pain of existence by erasing inscription just like we see her do during the game's ending so she can't be trusted p03 actually presents the opposite problem he wants to share inscription with the world which is not the kind of entity you want in charge when your goal is to bury a secret in the woods and hide it but leshi leshi just wants to play card games as we saw at the start of the game he's more than happy to exist in a perpetual loop forever sitting in his log cabin playing tabletop cards with anyone who will drop by in short leshi is the perfect soft lock which leads us to another disturbing conclusion here inscription is a game where the only winning move is not playing it by playing the game by beating leshi and starting a new game luke and by proxy us as the player have allowed the old data to escape we broke the soft lock we shattered casey's carefully crafted seal during the game's ending when inscription gets deleted the old data is able to be unleashed and that is our doing like i said at the beginning by playing the game we lose we were always meant to lose but that still leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions now that the old data's been unleashed what exactly happens when and where did the old data come from and who is the mysterious blue man that's behind it all in the brief flashes that we get as the old data gets unleashed we see a non-combatant certificate from the u.s department of defense for someone named barry reginald wilkinson as well as a brief text exchange that mentions that he smuggled the disc out mixed in with a bunch of other blank discs but those questions and more will have to come in a future episode because this one goes way beyond the world of just inscription just when you thought that you were done with the game there's an entire meta game that exists around it explaining its deepest and most interesting mysteries i told you this one had a ton of layers so next time watch as we cover the real world scavenger hunt that led to real people not actors but real gamers hunting down an actual floppy disk that was buried out in the woods labeled inscription so hit that subscribe button to get notified when that episode goes live because this is one story that's only just beginning in the meantime they've actually gotten kind of hungry and as appetizing as leshi's cake looks i'd rather order something from a slightly more trustworthy source and with the help of today's sponsor i can actually save money while doing it that's right today's episode was sponsored by honey the online shopping tool that finds promo codes across the web and automatically applies them at checkout whether you're looking for a quick meal or just trying to get a very very last minute gift for that one random second cousin that was invited to this year's holiday festivities you can save yourself a ton of cash by downloading the browser extension and shopping on all the sites that you already use all you have to do is add the item to your cart and boom honey automatically swoops in to find the savings and i bet some of you out there are probably skeptical that this really works well we've actually been sponsored by honey in the past and i'm so glad that they were willing to do so again because those of you who've already gotten honey using my link have found over 5 million dollars in savings from all your online purchases that is an incredible amount of extra cash if only luke had gotten in on the deal he probably could have afforded a better home security system to stop any shady game developers from breaking into his house or at least gotten some better recording equipment so anyway don't be like luke click the link down in the description below slash joinhoney.com m-a-t-p-a-t it's two clicks to download and immediately you start saving today and best of all it is totally free you never have to pay a cent to get all of those discounts so don't wait any longer head on down to the description and click the link joinhoney.com matpat m-a-t-p-a-t to sign up and start saving today and as always remember my friends it's all just a theory a game theory thanks for watching

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 4,951,071

Keywords: inscryption, inscryption game, inscryption gameplay, inscryption lore, inscryption ending, inscryption ending explained, inscryption explained, markiplier inscryption, scary games, card games, escape, creepy, creepypasta, inscription, inscription game, inscription gameplay, lore, deep lore, secrets, easter eggs, game theory, game theorists, matpat, gtlive inscryption

Id: VDZ85Jeu9LY

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 23 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Jasonn444]

Some details may be off, yes, but I've never thought or heard of the idea that Leshy could double as a softlock to further keep OLD_DATA hidden away. Neat.

[u/[deleted]]

Fuck yeah

[u/WackoMcGoose]

The moment I saw a GTLive video on Inscryption, I knew he'd make a Theory about it. And it looks like he's gonna dive into the ARG (and probably also Kaycee's Mod? maybe it wasn't out yet when he wrote the script for this one) in a follow-up episode...

[u/Snow8118]

Watched it and I was relieved when he said he’d do a part 2 I felt it barely covered the arg and I thought the video was a bit mid