Paul Czege was kind enough to send me a review copy of his newest zine Inscapes: How the Worlds We Make Make Us Who We Are.
“A zine of insights from my play of immersive journaling games. What happens when worlds take hold in us? What makes us real?”
If you are interested in immersive storytelling, Solo RPG journaling games, or simply curious about the ways in which the worlds we create can shape our lives, the Kickstarter is currently running and has just 5 days left!
Inscapes is the follow up to 2023’s The Ink That Bleeds – which as I’ve said before – is probably the single most important thing I read last year. My quote about it is even on the Kickstarter page!
In TITB Paul explored his journey into solo journaling games. And served as both a reflective analysis on the medium and as practical guide to help readers fully immerse themselves in, and benefit from, these experiences.
If TITB was an introduction, this text picks up right where the previous zine left off, a sequel of sorts. But I don’t think knowledge of the first book is strictly necessary.
Inscapes deepens and furthers Pauls understanding of what is ‘going on’, when we meet and make friends with people in our unconscious. And what is going on ‘between the worlds’ of the imaginal and the mundane.
As with TITB, Inscapes includes sections of example of play, mixed in with commentary, games design insights and (frankly) some super experimental metaphysics.
The example play extracts are provocative, intense, and at times heartbreaking. As I was reading yesterday I had to remind myself at time that I wasn’t reading fiction. Instead they are an instantiation or rather an upwelling from his unconscious – a very private thing . As the people, or friends Paul makes in the games are – (for the most part imo) – manifestations of his own unconscious.
He takes accusations of ‘self delusion’ (a common refrain from critics of solo RPG journaling games) head on too. I know that the TITB is popular amongst narrative therapists, and Paul writes quite vulnerably about his own childhood trauma and how the play has helped him circle around some themes that have been recurrent throughout his personal life:
The worlding of your unconscious brings you into proximity to people contending with the problems that have vexed you in being who you should be. When it doesn’t know the answer it believes you’ll figure it out, or you’ll learn it from someone who has, or who does, whose life is true, whose own inscape you can trust
Paul Czege – Inscapes
Perhaps because I’ve been injecting so much James Hollis into my brain, or because I’m currently writing my own long zine on solo RPG journaling game’s I loved this. Also I think this new medium is important, and Paul is one of the only people writing about them in this way. In fact, I think Solo RPG journaling games are at the bleeding edge of game design.
They are a Jungian psycho-technology.
Here’s a little extract from my own upcoming zine on the subject:
As players, we all bend our minds in similar ways when we enter the play-space of the games designer. Unlike other game worlds however, the gamespace is our own subconscious.
The psychic environment the designer creates for us as players is achieved by the manipulation of the structure of thought.
At its core, Inscapes is about worlds. The worlds we make for our selves, the worlds we inhabit, and the worlds that inhabit us. “We are made by our inscapes”.
I can’t recommend it enough.
You can back Inscapes: How the Worlds We Make Make Us Who We Are On Kickstarter Until July 21st
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