INSIDE starts with you playing as a small child running through a forest, pursued by gunmen, vans, and guard dogs. His flight takes him through several different areas — a farm, a steelworks, and a dilapidated city — and as the player platforms and solves puzzles to get through each area, they eventually find themselves delving into a research institute, which is, seemingly, the source of everything that’s happening. It’s difficult to really talk about the plot of INSIDE. Not because of any major spoilers (though, admittedly, there’s a pretty big one) more so because… the plot is your interpretation of it. Not necessarily just in terms of thematic content — though that’s a big part — you loosely have to intuit what’s going on around you, and then… bring your own perspective into it. Figure out your own meaning out of the puzzle pieces laid out in front of you.
Of course, it’s very easy for this particular approach to fall flat. For something, say, to make an attempt at looking evocative, or “artsy,” but for that to be a front for a work that turns out to be more vacuous in nature. That’s subjective, of course, and dependent on the thoughts and tastes of whatever given audience member is the one staring at the painting. I, personally, am of the viewpoint (or, well, the uni teachings) that everything has something behind the surface, however intended by the author, however much you need to squint your eyes to see it. It’s not a viewpoint I exercise often. As somebody who’d say he’s… more of a creative than he really is a critic, oftentimes when I look at a piece of media I pick more at the skull than I do the brain: my focus is on the construction of a work, what specific choices the author made and how that could be applied to my own creative pursuits. It usually takes a work (or something outside of it) specifically prompting me to delve into the thematic side of the equation. INSIDE is a game that asks the player to look at it with that sort of lens. And, luckily for it, I think it succeeds on that front.
What helps, though, is that even if it didn’t, it’s still a pretty solid puzzle platformer on its own. It’s a bit more of the former than the latter, in that making forward progress is more about figuring out what to do over executing it, and I think that’s a formula that works. When you’re at a wall, or a chokepoint, all the pieces you need to make it past are right in front of you, and it’s mostly a matter of figuring out what the pieces are and where to place them. There are some really neat sequences — like the whole level taking place in the mines: how the whole area feels like one single giant puzzle that you slowly start to solve the more and more you gather the things you need — and some moments where you have to think outside the box to figure out your way past an obstacle. The artstyle is impressive, too: I love the use of 3D backgrounds and models for what is functionally a 2D sidescroller, and I’m a fan of how the game makes work of darker more muted colours like blacks and greys to still paint rather vivid and pretty landscapes. Most of all…
I really love the animation work. The way movement is depicted works to detail a lot of little things that help characterize the experience. Your character runs with a gait that… isn’t remotely smooth: there’s way too much needless extra movement and expenditure of energy whenever he runs. He flails and has his body completely taken by the air whenever he falls. He buckles when he hits the ground, and it takes a second for him to truly get back on his feet again. These aren’t the movements of anybody who has… any sort of finesse or knowledge on how to properly run and jump: this is a scared kid, on the run, up against a world that is all too happy to kill him on sight. Speaking of, the death animations feel genuinely brutal: the way you can see your blood splattering on the ground when the dogs rip your throat out, how everything becomes a mess of limbs and hair when a certain underwater creature grabs you, or how when you fall from too high you think, for a moment, that you’re right about to get back up, and then you don’t. Not to mention basically… a lot of the stuff that happens during the final act of the game, which looks and feels so gross not just by what’s in front of you, but through some of the little ways in which things move around there. In general, I really like the way things move in this game: it works both to characterize the situation and makes it feel a good bit more evocative.
I do think the experience could’ve been a bit more concise? It’s perhaps an odd complaint, given that the game’s only roughly 3.5 hours long, but I felt like you could maybe shave 30-45 minutes off that and have… a bit of a more focused experience. Some of the sections, I felt, felt… maybe extraneous: parts where it felt like the game was retreading old ground, or otherwise not really going anywhere new. I think maybe the road to the final act could’ve also been shorter: there’s a point where you think that it’s going to transition to the climax but then it keeps going for a good while longer before you reach it. While puzzles are mostly fairly intuitive, sometimes executing what you need to do feels a bit more tight than it should. This gets a bit rougher near the end, where oftentimes it seems like you know what you need to do… only for there to actually be an extra step involved, and sometimes it feels less like you’re missing one of the pieces and more like you’re just not doing it right.
But aside from those quibbles, I enjoyed my time with INSIDE. It’s a solid sidescroller that gives you challenges on multiple fronts — both in terms of the puzzles you need to solve to progress, and the work you kind of have to put in to understand what’s going on. I wouldn’t necessarily place it close to a game I super enjoyed, or anything: the length really does kill it, a little, and even then sometimes there’s only really so much an artsy platformer can really do to get more than a 👍/10 from me, but I liked this, it left an impression on me, and I think, maybe, this'll be something that I'll keep thinking about a good bit down the line. 7/10.
Of course, it’s very easy for this particular approach to fall flat. For something, say, to make an attempt at looking evocative, or “artsy,” but for that to be a front for a work that turns out to be more vacuous in nature. That’s subjective, of course, and dependent on the thoughts and tastes of whatever given audience member is the one staring at the painting. I, personally, am of the viewpoint (or, well, the uni teachings) that everything has something behind the surface, however intended by the author, however much you need to squint your eyes to see it. It’s not a viewpoint I exercise often. As somebody who’d say he’s… more of a creative than he really is a critic, oftentimes when I look at a piece of media I pick more at the skull than I do the brain: my focus is on the construction of a work, what specific choices the author made and how that could be applied to my own creative pursuits. It usually takes a work (or something outside of it) specifically prompting me to delve into the thematic side of the equation. INSIDE is a game that asks the player to look at it with that sort of lens. And, luckily for it, I think it succeeds on that front.
What helps, though, is that even if it didn’t, it’s still a pretty solid puzzle platformer on its own. It’s a bit more of the former than the latter, in that making forward progress is more about figuring out what to do over executing it, and I think that’s a formula that works. When you’re at a wall, or a chokepoint, all the pieces you need to make it past are right in front of you, and it’s mostly a matter of figuring out what the pieces are and where to place them. There are some really neat sequences — like the whole level taking place in the mines: how the whole area feels like one single giant puzzle that you slowly start to solve the more and more you gather the things you need — and some moments where you have to think outside the box to figure out your way past an obstacle. The artstyle is impressive, too: I love the use of 3D backgrounds and models for what is functionally a 2D sidescroller, and I’m a fan of how the game makes work of darker more muted colours like blacks and greys to still paint rather vivid and pretty landscapes. Most of all…
I really love the animation work. The way movement is depicted works to detail a lot of little things that help characterize the experience. Your character runs with a gait that… isn’t remotely smooth: there’s way too much needless extra movement and expenditure of energy whenever he runs. He flails and has his body completely taken by the air whenever he falls. He buckles when he hits the ground, and it takes a second for him to truly get back on his feet again. These aren’t the movements of anybody who has… any sort of finesse or knowledge on how to properly run and jump: this is a scared kid, on the run, up against a world that is all too happy to kill him on sight. Speaking of, the death animations feel genuinely brutal: the way you can see your blood splattering on the ground when the dogs rip your throat out, how everything becomes a mess of limbs and hair when a certain underwater creature grabs you, or how when you fall from too high you think, for a moment, that you’re right about to get back up, and then you don’t. Not to mention basically… a lot of the stuff that happens during the final act of the game, which looks and feels so gross not just by what’s in front of you, but through some of the little ways in which things move around there. In general, I really like the way things move in this game: it works both to characterize the situation and makes it feel a good bit more evocative.
I do think the experience could’ve been a bit more concise? It’s perhaps an odd complaint, given that the game’s only roughly 3.5 hours long, but I felt like you could maybe shave 30-45 minutes off that and have… a bit of a more focused experience. Some of the sections, I felt, felt… maybe extraneous: parts where it felt like the game was retreading old ground, or otherwise not really going anywhere new. I think maybe the road to the final act could’ve also been shorter: there’s a point where you think that it’s going to transition to the climax but then it keeps going for a good while longer before you reach it. While puzzles are mostly fairly intuitive, sometimes executing what you need to do feels a bit more tight than it should. This gets a bit rougher near the end, where oftentimes it seems like you know what you need to do… only for there to actually be an extra step involved, and sometimes it feels less like you’re missing one of the pieces and more like you’re just not doing it right.
But aside from those quibbles, I enjoyed my time with INSIDE. It’s a solid sidescroller that gives you challenges on multiple fronts — both in terms of the puzzles you need to solve to progress, and the work you kind of have to put in to understand what’s going on. I wouldn’t necessarily place it close to a game I super enjoyed, or anything: the length really does kill it, a little, and even then sometimes there’s only really so much an artsy platformer can really do to get more than a 👍/10 from me, but I liked this, it left an impression on me, and I think, maybe, this'll be something that I'll keep thinking about a good bit down the line. 7/10.