INSIDE is the spiritual successor to Limbo; an atmospheric, creepy, strange and sometimes brutal platformer taking place in a strange surreal land. Playing a nameless kid, you strut along buildings, fields and weird facilities for no discernible reason, besides the fact that you are pursued by men in black, dogs, killer mermaids and strange robots. I had a good time with this game, even if some parts were just frustrating and if the balance of puzzles wasn’t always on point. It was still pretty good, and I recommend it!
You start the game outside, in a strange and dark forest patrolled by masked agents. You strut around the woods, observing the sights - the game is doing an incredible job at creating a world with lore you can piece together in your head without using any words or dialogue or UI elements - and sometimes having to run away from an obstacle or two. These escape sequences are puzzles in their own right, you get spotted, start running, figure out what your tools are. Should you hide behind a fallen container or keep running? Sometimes it’s not entirely clear what you have to do and failing a few times before getting it right can be a bit frustrating, but the game has no penalty for failing, and you’ll get checkpointed just before that sequence.
You have a very small amount of verbs in INSIDE. You can mainly run around, jump and move things. The interactions come from the elements of the environment you’ll find along the way. A mind-control device you can use to move other characters around, a submarine, water-control levels, boxes with propellers, a weird ball of fleshy bodies melted in a single entity you can use to smash your way through the strange facilities. These are all neat tricks the first time you see them, and with some very rare exceptions, they usually don’t overstay their welcome. But sometimes it does happen and you have to do the same puzzle a few too many times. It doesn’t help that your character will sometime have to go through long distances extremely slowly during a puzzle and if you’ve chosen the wrong way it might feel like an extra slog to come back.
The obstacles you have to overcome are creative as well. Sequences where you have to pretend to be mind-controlled. Bits with sonic blasts that you have to dodge behind metal panels, the aforementioned killer mermaids that act like boos in a mario game. It’s part of the charm of INSIDE, to see what’s coming next and to try and figure out how it makes sense in the greater world around you - a world that is forever hidden to the player, in this specific case.
INSIDE was pretty good! I had enjoyed Limbo, so I knew I would at least have some affinity for this game. If you enjoy that style of atmospheric - almost horror - adventure platformer. I recommend you give it a shot!
