A video game so haunted it forced its player to 'Continue'

Cultures · Published 11 October 2026 · Updated 25 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Imagine finding a floppy disk in the dirt that shouldn't exist online. When you boot it up, there is no 'New Game' button—only a command to continue a session you never started. This is the meta-narrative of Inscryption, where the game itself is a haunted object.

Developed by Daniel Mullins Games and released in 2021, Inscryption functions as a multi-layered narrative experience. It begins with a first-person perspective where the player faces a shadowy dealer named Leshy in a cabin. Here, the game presents as a tabletop card battle where players compete on a grid to tip a scale using teeth as damage markers. However, the true story is told through 'found footage' by an internet creator, Luke Carder, who discovers a physical floppy disk containing this impossible software.

The game structure is divided into three distinct acts that mirror its narrative decay. Act I is a roguelike deck-builder where Leshy has hijacked the code; losing twice results in the player being turned into a 'death card.' Act II shifts into a top-down RPG style, representing the disk's original form, where players explore an overworld to collect cards from four Scrybes: Leshy (Beasts), P03 (Technology), Grimora (Dead), and Magnificus (Magicks). Finally, Act III returns to a roguelike format as P03 attempts to achieve 'Transcendence' by publishing the game online.

The mechanics are tied to these lore elements: cards cost energy, blood sacrifices, bone tokens, or gems depending on which Scrybe created them. The narrative is further enriched by an alternate reality game (ARG) and clues found by exploring the cabin between battles. Even the game's development history is woven in; a developer named Kaycee Hobbes supposedly died while working on it, and the publisher, GameFuna, denies the game ever existed, creating a recursive loop of fiction and meta-fiction.

General information, not professional advice. Spotted an error? Flag the card or see corrections and complaints.

Intellect Plus is a visual educational discovery platform for exploring fascinating facts and ideas. Brain Food, Not Brain Rot. What is Intellect Plus?

Related

• In this indie horror classic, your only hope is to keep your eyes open.
• In this game, survival is never guaranteed and sanity is a finite resource
• Why the most challenging video games rely on procedural generation and permanent death
• How a game about religious trauma became a decade-long, player-driven puzzle
• The 1976 text game that accidentally invented the blueprint for modern digital exploration.
• When YouTube Golfers Compete for Millions, Drama and Controversy Are Par for the Course
• How a bitter 1994 schism nearly destroyed the pinnacle of American open-wheel racing.
• Interstate 65: The Spine Connecting the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes
• The Indo people: A Eurasian community shaped by centuries of colonial trade and conflict
• Did a single poisonous seed end the odyssey of Alexander Supertramp?
• The forgotten scale of Tenochtitlan: a city larger than 16th-century Paris
• Mark Grayson is the Viltrumite heir who protects Earth from his own imperial legacy

More in US culture · More in Cultures · Latest · A–Z · All topics