Some clever puzzle mechanics and a truly disturbing surreal world help create some genuine and creepy moments. However, at its core, it is an extremely simplistic platforming game that will last from 4-6 hours. It also feels as if it is deliberately disturbing for the sake of being disturbing. Being left open to interpretation is one thing but I feel that you would be hard-pressed to arrive at a cohesive and satisfying narrative theory that explains and justifies everything the game throws at you. Story elements don't have to always be explained; some vagueness is welcome in storytelling but this game goes really far to disturb and confront without offering any substance beyond what amounts to a puzzle platformer.

It is my understanding that this will be taken as an extremely unpopular opinion but if I (English teacher) have to look up an explanation of the ending or read theories then the storytelling elements of your game aren't as concise as they should be. Some of the ideas and elements are obvious (control vs free will, individuality vs collectivism) but many things that happen throughout the adventure are much more open to interpretation and I fail to see where they fit in the narrative. Perhaps another playthrough is warranted but for now, I will conclude that this is a platforming game with high hopes and expectations of itself that I enjoyed playing but don't want to give much more thought to.

Inside is technically a story driven puzzle-platformer, though its greatest strengths lie in the atmospheric and tense psychological horror genre. Inside is a game that tells a coherent tale of the underlying and appealing philosophies below the surface. The game is one of the best games in terms of presentation with incredible camera angles, lighting, animations, sound and art design in addition to a high level of graphical fidelity, all of which contribute to the incredible sense of atmosphere the game is able to create.

Story

Inside is set in a mysterious dystopian future, where you control a boy running away. Inside is not a horror game in the typical sense, however it does share a lot of similarities to psychological horror or thriller films through the creation of very tense moments set in an atmospheric world. The comparison to psychological horror films is very strong, however Inside is definitely a game and it utilises the potential in video game storytelling that cannot be achieved with film. Inside is a story with some very strong philosophies about individuality vs collectivism and the result of both. Fundamentally Inside is a bleak painting of society on both perspectives, on the one hand individuality is scary and you will have to face your fears alone, whilst the game more evidently shows the risks of collectivism by forcing you to do things you don’t want to and the loss of your individuality. Overall the philosophy was easy to understand by film and even video game standards and it’s one that resonated strongly with me.

Gameplay

Inside is fundamentally a story driven puzzle-platformer, though the gameplay elements are the weakest part of the game. The platforming is very basic and not really used outside of a method of getting around, but the controls here are good and the physics are great. The puzzles are alright, there are several familiar mechanics here but the game does not dwell on a single mechanic which you can view as a good or bad thing. The puzzles are pretty easy once you get your mind into the right zone, but ultimately they’re average.

Presentation

This maybe one of the best games in terms of presentation. Every aspect seems to be done perfectly: lighting, animations, sound design, music, physics, camera angles, art design and graphical fidelity. The lighting, sound design, music and camera angles are what is key here in contributing to the incredible atmosphere this game has. The camera framing and lighting brings an incredible focus to each scene and is a constant subtle source of direction whilst the sound design, lighting and music contributes most to the horror elements of the game. Technically and artistically Inside is a brilliant game to play.

I'm a pretty big fan of Limbo. I've heard a lot about how great Inside is for years and years (9 of them apparently!) as well. Somehow I never actually settled down to play it until now in spite of all this. Gotta say, I'm a little let down, if only because my expectations were set a bit high.

It's very quickly apparent from the get go with Inside that you'll be getting a gameplay experience pretty similar to Playdead's other game. This is more side-scrolling, box-pushing, gloomy goodness. Thankfully there are some more mechanics introduced later on to keep things from getting too stale, but I had hoped for some gameplay that felt more like an evolution of what I'd previously experienced. Again, what's there is cool, but it felt a bit more like Kirby Mass Attack than something unique.

Also notable for me was that the boy you play as kind of feels like a slog to control. He has a weight to him that makes solving some puzzles that demand speed a bit of a pain where they otherwise wouldn't be. What did impress me was that the game did a pretty great job of knowing which items I wanted to interact with when there were multiple in arm's reach.

Inside features a fairly gloomy art style that feels serviceable at best. Humans are simplified, with no visible eyes or mouths, and the environment looks... kind of plain I guess? It's a lot of various industrial buildings and labs that didn't strike me as remarkable. Again, I couldn't help but feel like Limbo did this better. Inside has a very smooth, minimal, generic look to it, and I'm not sure if it's because others have deliberately copied it since its release or it really is just basic looking. I still feel like Limbo with its cartoony black and white looks fantastic all these years later and deserves recognition for the way it leverages its art style to toy with the player through manipulation of light and shadow.

Inside does do a really great job of lightly guiding the player along using little visual clues to hint at puzzle solutions. I rarely felt stuck or frustrated and the game never said a single word to me or outright handed me an answer. There's just an excellent intersection of visuals and puzzle design going on here. Keeping frustration low without giving away solutions is a great way to keep me, the player, engaged.

It feels a bit wrong to spend so much of the review comparing this game to Limbo, but they clearly went for a very similar type of game here and I think they could honestly do better. The story is just as if not more vague than their previous work and I don't really feel all that interested in theorizing about what it all means. For me, a lot of the weird shit I saw happen felt like it was there to make me uncomfortable but lacked the cohesion that would have otherwise made it work.

Years ago I bought this on GOG but haven't played it because I don't have a gaming computer and my monitor is quite small which would not make for a great gaming experience.

For a better gaming experience I recently bought it, on sale, for PS4. I thought the screen shots looked awesome, there are rave reviews, and it's right up my alley with the creepy atmosphere, dystopian themes, and really nice artsy graphics.

So lets go over some pros and cons.

Pros:

• Amazing visuals that set the mood for a dystopian world. Everything is dark, gray, and ominous which makes the player feel a little unsettled. The game is scary in some aspects but it's at a deeper level than say a horror movie.
• Sound effects are spot on and general ambiance is well executed
• Puzzles are just the right amount of challenging with everything feeling intuitive
• Themes of the game are generally obvious and there's a sense of vulnerability as the boy is constantly in dangerous situations and the chances of getting caught are high

Cons:

• The only thing that comes to mind is the story is ambiguous. Nothing is explained and much of it is left up to the interpretation of the player. I don't particularly have much of a problem with this because the game is an artistic expression which in the art world a lot of themes are open to interpretation. I'm knocking off one star because I would like a more clear understanding of the story but I can still appreciate the intrigue of a loose storyline.

Conclusion:

I really enjoyed Inside and would highly recommend it. It was an amazing experience and being a short game I felt it did not drag on too much. For the price I paid I can confidently say I got my moneys worth and then some.

Other thoughts on games I’ve played so far as part of my ‘horroresque’ October: Carrion, KONA, Outlast, Outlast 2

I’ll straight up come out and say it: I understood barely anything about the story, if anything at all. I can guess, speculate and hypothesise, but ultimately, pretty much every possibility I come up with bumps into logical flaws and doesn’t account for everything I saw. Yet this didn’t bother me one bit, and I still wholeheartedly loved every single second I spent with this game.

Even though Inside is widely praised, I’ve seen some criticism circulating about it that I can, for the most part, understand, even if I don’t necessarily relate when looking at the game as a whole. I’ve seen people complain that it doesn’t make sense, that dying doesn’t matter and that its puzzles are repetitive. The first two seem obvious, but I think that ultimately comes down to your perception going in: in my personal opinion, Inside, much like Limbo, isn’t about a storytelling narrative, it’s about a visual one. If you approach it this way, not only does it greatly diminish the importance of the story in this game, it also ties directly to the second criticism. It doesn’t matter if you die in Inside, because it shouldn’t. The game wants nothing to do with punishing you for not being fast enough, for not figuring out a puzzle in your first attempt, or for simply being sloppy in your mechanical actions. It’s all about throwing you back into that bleak yet uniquely beautiful world again and again. During the course of 4 hours, you are meant to feel like you’re there, you are meant, as much as possible, to ‘become’ an integral part of it, and to do so effortlessly, without thought. That’s why dying doesn’t matter. Inside isn’t about punishment, it’s about osmosis. These are the reasons why, although I understand the complaints, I can’t relate to them, because ultimately I approached the game from a different angle. The third criticism I listed - repetitive puzzles - is the one I absolutely cannot understand or agree with. I personally thought the puzzles, much like everything else in Inside, were extremely well crafted, highly creative and better than its predecessor. And maybe I’m dumb, but I actually had a harder time with a couple of these than I did with most of the puzzles present in Limbo. Yes, perhaps there were some interesting mechanics that were underused, but at the end of the day, most problem solving moments were highly satisfying to me and never felt repetitive, boring, out of place or illogical.

I thought I would focus on the few criticisms I saw of the game rather than my own because, to be fair, there isn’t much I could criticise about Inside. The atmosphere is incredible, the game play feels so tight, fluid and intuitive, and the whole experience gets printed on you for quite a while, which is impressive for such a short game. For the ones who told me that, if I loved Limbo - a game that was criticised for much of the same things -, I would definitely love Inside, you were absolutely right. I still hold Limbo slightly higher only because of two things: visual impact and subjective personal significance. Everything else, however, was done better in Inside. A 9/10 game for me, that quickly rose to the top of my all-time favourite side-scrollers.

A worthy follow up to Limbo in themes, tone, and gameplay. Inside is more a bigger and more polished game than Limbo, and Inside has a clearer narrative. That being said, Limbo, by virtue of being the originator, is a more original and has that raw energy you find when comparing a sequel to the original.

One way Inside combats this is by having a bonkers ending, where I was shocked when things developed the way they did. The pace quickens, the music amps up, the rumble in the controller was juiced, every aspect of the game crescendos at climax — it leaves a lasting impression far greater than Limbo, and coupled with the secret ending, it is one of the strongest parts of the game.

There are a few sections that suck though, and those are the water levels. I am appreciative of the variety in pace, the water levels force the player to slow down and think, but they simply go on for too long.

After playing Control, I've come to realize that I really enjoy exploring office and industrial spaces in video games -- The Stanley Parable and Portal 1 & 2 also scratches that itch. Inside is another in this line games with its mid 20th century computers and scientist vibes, combined with giant machines and spaces.