Lore

OK I need to write this down NOW so I don’t go to sleep and tell myself I dreamt it.

I’m working late and testing the latest build and out of nowhere The Angler starts FREAKING OUT. Like he pulled something up out of the river with his hook then he GETS UP and WALKS. There is no walk animation for this character! WTF?! He walked right into the cabin. I followed him in and couldn’t find him. Leshy had some new dialogue lines that I CANNOT FIND IN THE DIALOGUE FILE. He said something about some “OLD_DATA” and how The Angler served him well or something.

I’m so tired that I’m already wondering if I made this up.

So I woke up and damn near lost my mind. I tried to recreate that bug with The Angler over and over and nothing weird was happening. Then I realized I was testing on a different disk! So I popped in the same disk as last night and HOLY SHIT. Leshy went 3D. What does that mean? I barely even know. Maybe I AM crazy. The entire game is different. Leshy took over and it’s 3D. I don’t know anyone who would listen to me about this.

I’ve been playing this “new” Inscryption now for a few days. Work has been unproductive. I emailed some of the other devs - kinda probing to see if they know anything about this without appearing crazy. No dice.

The strange thing? The game is fun. Like it’s actually a good game. But stranger still? Leshy. He talks to the Challenger almost as if he’s talking to ME. It’s freaky but not altogether unwelcome - I could use a friend.

I scoured the disk last night looking for some kind of explanation. And I found some really wild stuff. It made me think… what is the OLD_DATA and why does Leshy only talk about it when he’s wearing The Woodcarver’s mask?

I found some log from Mr. Kaminski. It was pretty clear when I met him that the guy had issues… but he seemed to be saying in this log that the entire development of Inscryption was a cover. For what? How infuriating if true.

Time to start another run I guess.

I'm addicted to Leshy's Inscryption.

It's far from perfect though. Some really unbalanced shit in here to be honest. I have my Ouroboros up to over a hundred thanks to the stupidly broken Fecundity sigil combo.

I decided that I'm going to work on making this balanced. And maybe a bit of an actual challenge? I'm making a mod! I wonder what Leshy will think.

Work on the mod continues. I was appalled to find that Leshy chose to use the Kaycee Hobbes' ghoul skull as a trinket on his shelf. He fills it with teeth for the Trapper after every boss... Kinda lame because it's tedious to keep getting up from the table just to collect the teeth. I'll have to hack that out. He'll hate me for it.

Some nights I mod, some nights I dig. I dig deeper into this log file and find things I sometimes wish I hadn't. This isn't just some disk Kaminski used to vent his workplace frustrations. This is like some real shit.

Every once in a while I get some context from The Woodcarver and it's chilling. This could all be bunk... or there could be a doomsday machine under Berlin armed by a code hidden on a pack of cards.

In other news I just finished implementing the Boss Totems challenge.

I barely leave the apartment save for the odd dinner out with mom... but last night was an exception. I went to Comics Land to play a Secrets of Legendaria draft. Is it weird that I brought the disk with me? I felt uncomfortable being apart from it.

I ended up ripping a foil Sweaty Dragon but lost the first match to this weird dude who wanted to record it for his YouTube channel. Like he actually brought a camcorder on a shaky looking tripod to the shop! How is that allowed?!

Today I found out what happened to P03... Leshy turned The Scrybe of Technology into a Stoat card. I found the card on the shelf below the safe and laughed right out loud when it told me it was P03 and needed help. I handed it over to Leshy who was less amused. I guess this is the fate that the other Scrybes met... though I haven't seen them yet.

Last night I brought the disk with me on a walk around the seawall and was THIS close to just chucking it out into the water.

If I'm right the Karnoffel Code is still out there and the machine is, incredibly, still ready to accept it. Destroy the disk, no one finds the Code, and no one can blow up half of Europe. Right? But I saw an otter which made me think of Leshy. Maybe we need the Code to DISarm the machine? Could that be right? I can't be sure.

I went home.

<DATA CORRUPTED. FOR ANY QUALITY CONCERNS PLEASE CONTACT KAMINSKI DATA STORAGE MFG.>

Call from Mr. Kaminski at 9:45pm. What the hell is wrong with this guy? He wants all the sample disks back at the factory NOW. What does he know? NAH TICK MASS he kept saying.

I'm done with all of this but I can't bring myself to destroy this disk, I'm sorry. I've got a little wooden box and I'm gonna bury it with the disk inside. I'm writing the coords down and who knows maybe I'll burn them later. Leshy will thank me. The world may not.

Goodbye for now <3

No one will ever play this mod and, the way things are looking, they might never even play this game. But I'm gonna indulge in a fantasy.

Thousands of players play it and love it. They each find different reasons to love it and even love its imperfections. They make music and art about it that makes me see my own work in a different way. But even a simple comment can have this effect. It makes me feel like all my work mattered and then some. I am overflowing with gratitude.

...Well, time to finsh up the Squirrel Fish challenge. Maybe I'll hit up Comics Land later.