Inside is from the same developers as Limbo, and thus this is a short puzzle game that focuses on the atmosphere, and yes, it has a ton of atmosphere. It’s set in a dystopian world, and the story is told through the player’s inference. The color palette is overly grey and drab, basically just shades of black and grey, so it makes the little color it has from time to time pop out even more. This adds to its setting and adds to the sense of hopelessness and desperateness that the protagonist is feeling as well.
You start off with a boy running through the forest trying to escape his pursuers. This immediately sets the tone, and it has a similar feeling to Limbo. This is a sidescroller where you run from side to side, and the puzzles are built around that. A few of the puzzles are physics based, and they are generally quite intuitive in what you must do. Although it also tended to rely on timing for the solution, not giving you much chance to just stand there and think it through as you’ll have enemies trying to kill you.
Most of the game has the boy running up until you arrive at a puzzle (which may not be obvious at first glance). A lot of the puzzles are designed to kill you, so that you know that you need to try something else. Death is a slap on the wrist, as it’ll just send you back to the closest checkpoint which is usually at the beginning of the puzzle. There are slight annoyances at times where you may have to wait once you’ve reloaded to get the timing correct again.
Given that there are only two actions the boy can do: jump and interact with objects, you can generally work out what you need to do. A lot of the puzzles boil down to interacting with an object after finding another object and moving that first. A unique gimmick that will surprise you at first is how the boy, in certain situations, can control other people and this adds to the creepy atmosphere of the game. A few puzzles have you running away from enemies and having to jump or figure out the sequence of doing things to not have those enemies catch up and kill you. These are probably the less likeable puzzles as they add a sense of urgency, but at the cost of being annoying.
Despite the consistently drab color palette of black and different shades of grey, there is a good variety in the environment. You’ll move through them fast, from a forest to a city to underwater to a mine. The puzzles also grow in scale, as the earlier ones are fast to solve, and everything is in the same room. Later puzzles are bigger in scope, with multiple steps and a few more rooms. They never become too large or too obtuse though. That said, the heavy reliance on time-based puzzles during the middle portion of the game can be annoying.
The game nails the atmosphere though. There is a sense of creepiness, and as the player, you feel vulnerable as the boy has no means of defense except for running away from threats. When a lot of those puzzles involve things chasing you, whereby it’s instant death if it catches up, it instills a sense of dread, fear and urgency. The story is told via the environment and what happens in the background. There is an interesting sense of mystery, although the ending is unusual and completely unexpected. When the credits roll, you have a sense of “what just happened?” and be confused as you try and process it.
Overall, Inside is an okay game. It doesn’t have the same surprise impact as Limbo, given that we have some sort of idea on what to expect. The puzzles are a lot easier, so you will be less likely to be stuck at one puzzle for too long. None of the puzzles are extremely annoying. The game is short, taking around three hours for a first run, with little reason to replay unless you want to find all the secrets and unlock the secret ending (which the game doesn’t hint at).
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