This was published 8 years ago
Inside review: a beautiful and terrifying adventure game
By Tim Biggs
If you played 2010's grim and fantastic puzzle platformer Limbo, you may have spent some time since wondering how Danish developer Playdead could possibly top it with its second title, Inside.
While the game very much builds upon its predecessor, the sheer unexpectedness of Inside's story, and the dreamlike quality of its mundane yet terrifying world, makes it superior. Its mix of accessibility and profundity makes it perhaps the only game so far released in 2016 that I would recommend categorically to anybody.
Every frame of Inside could be taken as a standalone art piece.
The player takes the role of a young boy as he navigates a disturbing world and uses its elements to solve puzzles. Polished and minimalist in both its art and gameplay, Inside is easy to understand and play but presents a series of scenarios to challenge the psyche and soul.
It's tough to discuss its themes without robbing Inside of some of its suspenseful power (so stop reading now and find three hours to play through it), but in short, our hunted hero risks incredible dangers to infiltrate a facility housing horrific subversions of biology that defy description. Manipulating and surviving them will be key to making it deeper into the facility, and what you'll find there is virtually assured to shock and confront you.
Deaths are frequent, but never punishing, and serve to teach you what you should or should not be doing to progress. Some are so startling as to be entertaining – like when the boy is blown apart by an unexpected blast or snatched away by a retracting taser wire – while others linger on just enough to be genuinely unsettling, like when you just don't make it to the water's surface or get away from attack dogs in time.
Along the way Inside creates situations that are intellectually challenging and thematically very creepy, but that also provide satisfying and interesting mechanics for light puzzle-solving. Less easily solved are questions and challenges raised by the game's incredible journey, which will surely be the subject of discussions for years to come.
Inside is out now on Xbox One, releasing for PC on July 8.