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Games Like Inscryption: Horror Card Games and Meta Horror

Inscryption is a deadly card game across a cabin table that keeps showing you what lies behind the game itself. These games share its grim table games, its meta tricks, or both, from Daniel Mullins' own Pony Island to Buckshot Roulette and KinitoPET.

The games

10 of the 13 games in this guide are outside your choice (GOG) and are left out. Show them all.

  1. Forbidden Solitaire key art: a screaming bearded man and a tower with glowing windows in purple light, with a red gem in an eye shape under the title Multiple endingsForbidden SolitaireA bloody solitaire on a cursed 1995 CD-ROM, in a 90s FMV hellscape, while what is on the disc reaches into your life.
  2. Buddy Simulator 1984 library art: a repeating pattern of grey pixel-art creatures, robots, animals and objects from the game on a near-black field PsychologicalBuddy Simulator 1984Software posing as a 1980s AI buddy that builds whole games to keep you entertained, and grows unsettling.
  3. IMSCARED art: a dark figure with long hair, outlined in white, standing in front of a huge faint pixelated face on black PsychologicalIMSCAREDMeta horror that pretends to crash and leaves files on your desktop that you have to read to go on.

Inscryption works on two levels at once: a deckbuilding card game against a shadowy captor across a cabin table, and a game that keeps breaking out of its frame to show what is behind it. The games here take one side or the other, or both.

Pony Island is the obvious next step: Daniel Mullins' earlier game, a broken arcade machine built by the devil that you escape by peering behind its pony game and repairing its code. It is short and full of the same tricks.

If it was the table that stayed with you, Buckshot Roulette sits you across from a grinning dealer for Russian roulette with a shotgun, with items that change the odds each round, and has an online mode for friends. Forbidden Solitaire is a card game on a cursed 1995 CD-ROM, played in a 90s FMV-style hellscape while the disc reaches into your life. ARSONATE is a card duel in a burning fire tower against a masked host, and its demo plays free in the browser. Unlikely is a tiny dice game across a bloodstained table against a hungry clown, pay what you want. FLATHEAD straps you to a machine in the dark to guess over or under on the next number, bending the odds with gadgets and banking points to buy your freedom while deformed creatures close in behind you. The cabin game is a co-op version of the idea: players draw cards to reveal clues and rooms in a locked cabin, and each card can turn on them.

If it was the game breaking its frame, KinitoPET is a friendly desktop assistant from the early 2000s who will not let you go, Buddy Simulator 1984 is an AI friend that builds games for you, and IMSCARED pretends to crash and leaves files on your desktop. Doki Doki Literature Club is free and the most played of these: a cheerful dating sim about a literature club that turns into psychological horror; it is not for children. Feed The Pit and WORLD OF HORROR take the cards and the run structure into investigation and mystery.

Start with Pony Island for the same maker's tricks, or Buckshot Roulette for the tension across the table.

Questions

What games are like Inscryption?

Pony Island, by the same maker, is the closest. Buckshot Roulette and Forbidden Solitaire share its grim table game, and KinitoPET and IMSCARED share its habit of breaking out of the game.

Are there free games like Inscryption?

Doki Doki Literature Club is free, Unlikely is pay what you want and plays in the browser, and ARSONATE has a free browser demo on itch.io.

Is there a multiplayer game like Inscryption?

Buckshot Roulette has an online mode for up to four players, and the cabin game is a card-driven horror game for one to four.

Who made Inscryption?

Daniel Mullins Games, published by Devolver Digital. Daniel Mullins also made Pony Island.

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