Inside (Xbox One, PC)
Developer: Playdead
Release: June 29, 2016
Price: $19,99
Score: 9 out of 10
I’m running as fast as my tiny legs can carry me. Hurtling forward, my obsequies red shirt touches the ground like a puddle of blood as I scrape and tumble through black shades of underbrush. Inside a dark and gloomy forest, I pick myself up, but it’s too late; a snarling Doberman – the visceral heart of darkness itself – looms large over me as the screen fades to black. I’m dead.
No, you’re most definitely not reading something out of a private novel I’ve been writing. I’ve just gotten back to grips with Inside, the latest adventure from Playdead – the magic hands behind Limbo, a 2010 platformer which was released to near universal acclaim.
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Premise
Inside is their latest effort, and much like Limbo, you’re thrown into the game head-first with one prerogative: move forward or die.
“Hunted and alone, a boy finds himself drawn into the center of a dark project” is all you’re given to go on; and like the game’s central protagonist, you find yourself drawn in far more quickly than you’d like. Shades of terror dominate this title and paint strokes of unease in greater breadth than fear itself.
There’s the sensation while playing Inside that, much like a horrible car crash, you can’t look away. It’s partly because of the game’s control mechanic; you can only move left or right and jump. Progress feels so natural and backdrops blend so beautifully with the foreground that one feels often pressed to escape their immediate surroundings. It’s a combination that presses tightly against your chest and forces you to keep playing.
If I’m waxing lyrical, you’ll need to forgive me. The world Inside creates itself is a poetic one, and even it’s ending – which I won’t spoil here – is, I believe, a metaphorical tale.
Visually speaking
Inside is a visual treat. It’s a common statement to make for titles which replicate every pore on the human face, but Inside manages to be beautiful by flying in the face of that. Somewhat like Limbo, there’s an astonishing lack of detail but an abundance of presence.
As I’ve said to many who’ve asked me, one of my favorite moments in the game takes place within the first few minutes. As you move forward, avoiding the penetrating gaze of flashlights and the snarls of attack dogs, a large truck moves off-screen in the background; light striking its trailer in just the right way that depth becomes real. For a 2.5D platformer, this is an amazing use of breadth and space which simultaneously keeps you focussed on your immediate foreground while canvassing greater allure in the background.
Gameplay
Playing Inside is simple. Moving left or right, your character needs to jump over, through, and occasionally land in areas in which a puzzle must be completed to progress to the next stage.
Puzzles become more macabre and dark as the game progresses, as you near the heart of the tale itself. Butchered livestock dots the initial few levels, before one finds oneself surrounded with corpses and, later on, live human beings and assorted abominations.
What Inside does well is craft a tale where facing an amorphous monster is somehow equally as tense as coming face to face with a snarling Doberman. Each encounter feels crafted and timed to a tee, and the game’s visual style with its use of darkness and light paint together a bleak tale that’s punctuated by dashes of muted colour.
Sound design
The game’s sound design is exquisite. Haunting tunes play as you solve one puzzle and move on to the next, beggaring the fear of what you might unleash. Subtle foley mimics the screeches of urban plots and rural swathes of land, and clever plays between quiet lures and loud warnings mix together to deliver a title that raises and lowers suspense on par with some of the best horror films.
Gameplay mechanics and puzzle tools are introduced slowly, and never I did I once find myself outdone or conquering a section too easily. Unlike our resident gaming guru Edward Love, I’m not a fan of overt difficulty – and I found Inside to be a well-rounded title that adequately mixed together a slight sense of frustration while never providing me with a puzzle I couldn’t complete.
The challenge
The largest difficulty curve can often be found in making use of new puzzle tools and mechanics for the first time. Luckily, once a player has understood the concept once, the game quickly reinforces the behaviors and ramps up the complexity of its challenges, leaving you to combine the best of your wits to make it to the end.
The game’s final section – which I’ll leave deliberately vague so as to avoid spoilers – is less of a puzzle-romp and more of a slide-and-shout to the finish. It’s a somewhat odd section compared to the slow pace of the game before its final stages, and it feels far more akin to a crescendo than the subtle overture one might feel during the game’s first three arcs. Over the space of its four-hour run time, Inside is comparable the climax of an opera which starts slowly, develops its themes, and unleashes its final ending with renewed vigor.
Inside offers some replay value, with plenty of secret areas and even a reclusive, whimsical ending in which the game plays on many of its gameplay themes. While this is a nice edition, Inside is a title you’ll most likely only play once.
Conclusion
If you’ve played Limbo before, you might find yourself in overly familiar territory with Inside. Thankfully, that’s quite a high compliment. For newcomers, Inside offers a captivating story replete with some of the most novel and masterful uses of tone, pace, colour and light to spin together a story of a journey towards a metaphorical heart of darkness.
Much like Joseph Conrad’s novel, this is a game that delves into the progressively dark and shines light through to illuminate the path forward. As well as Conrad might have penned his tome, Inside tells a short, subtle tale that’ll leave you thinking hours after you’ve completed it: this is a platformer that’s well worth your cash.
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Have your say!
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Follow Bryan Smith on Twitter: @bryansmithSA
