As a fan of text-less games, Inside sat well with me. I had a wonderful time playing this on the OLED Steam Deck with some decent headphones. Though misophonic at times, I found myself continually awed at the game's sound design. There were disturbingly organic sound interactions that combined with droning background notes in such a way that kept me feeling a slight disgust and intrigue that I can only imagine is exactly how the developers intended the player to be feel throughout the game.

The puzzles typically had a nice flow to them that kept me immersed in the weird environmental story telling. At worst, some puzzles required preemptive knowledge or trial & error to test out boundaries of mechanics in a very "video gamey" sort of way. This video-gameyness isn't necessarily a bad thing but can clash with the more immersive focus of how the game presents itself.

Whenever I considered how this type of game could evolve, my mind kept going to games like Another World/Out of This World. It was hard not to see this game as feature-stripped version of those types of games after I made this comparison.

With that said, Inside still holds its own and is a very nice experience through and through... I just can't agree with forcing the player to use the analog stick to move in a 2D side-scroller.