The sophomore effort of Danish studio Playdead, Inside is in many ways similar to its predecessor, Limbo. Both follow young children in a strange and dark locale, traversing from left to right, for no immediately obvious reason, besides to solve environmental puzzles and die a lot. While Inside is, in many ways, the superior game between the two, I still can’t stop myself from having niggling issues with the game that prevent me from holding it up as great. Not to say that Inside is a bad game, by any stretch. It’s just that it left me wanting, in many ways.
To start positive, Inside looks fantastic. While it keeps the dark and oppressive nature of Limbo’s world, Inside is not afraid to add detail and slight splashes of color missing from Limbo’s monochrome setting. In addition, the camera is perfectly willing to shift from its straight-on position, allowing more dynamic views of the landscape around your character. The audio design of the game is also superb, with sounds echoing just right for every situation the player finds themselves in. The music, while sparingly used, is oppressive and droning; a perfect fit for the tone of Inside.
The actual gameplay of Inside is, again, like Limbo; 2D puzzles solved by using various objects in the environment. While the primary means of doing this is to push and pull various boxes into position as you would expect from its predecessor, the game adds more than enough variety to stave off any feelings of repetition. One segment of the game forces you to move quickly from cover to cover to avoid a periodic sonic boom which will kill the main character should they be in the open. Another takes place within a bathysphere, ramming through walls and doors in an underwater environment. Several sections rely on using zombie-like people in a wide variety of ways to help you move obstacles. While the puzzles are never so hard as to stump for any particular period of time, figuring out the solution and putting it into action remains satisfying throughout the game, especially during multi-part puzzles.
The same cannot be said, unfortunately, of the game’s story, or to be more precise, the lack thereof. Your player character, this child, is constantly moving forward deeper and deeper into this...facility? I guess? Towards their almost-certain doom, but there’s no reason for it. Adults are trying to capture you but don’t ask me why. There is a girl with long hair in the water who will try to drown you but I don’t know her motivations. Some people are being mind-controlled while others look on uncaring, but if I was supposed to pick up on some sort of dynamic that explains this I never did. The same can easily be said of the environments of Inside, which you will see a wide variety of: a dense forest where masked men and attack dogs chase you relentlessly; a city where a mind-controlled population is corralled into trucks to be shipped off to god-knows-where; a sunken school that is far too large. Each individual area of the game is interesting and detailed and overwhelming and inventive and God I wish there was any sort of context or sense of their connection to each other. If there is any sort of intended cohesion to the areas and events of Inside, if someone at Playdead knows exactly what’s going on, then no hints towards that exist in the game, or at least, I did not pick up on any.
As far as confusion and a lack of answers goes, I must make special mention of the ending sequence of the game. I won’t spoil it here, but needless to say events occur which are incredibly silly. I am very, very aware that I was supposed to find the events grotesque, or nauseating, or any other number of unpleasant adjectives, but quite frankly, I’m still a bit surprised that I wasn’t laughing so hard I couldn’t play the game anymore. The last section of the game is entirely ludicrous, and while I enjoyed myself a great deal and the puzzles on display are the best in the game, I can’t help but feel pretty sure that the emotions I felt at the time were not what the developer intended.
Despite the not-supposed-to-be-a-blast-but-totally-is ending bit, Inside does not so much end as it peters out. There’s no last hurrah, no real conclusion, not even One Last Puzzle like Limbo that ends with a bang and tells you, definitively, that the game is Over And Done With and you can go on to try and figure out what was happening. In fact, the game ends with your character no longer moving, an agonizing 50+ second wait (I counted) wherein you can do nothing and which left me assuming the game had some sort of terrible bug… and then credits. The developers, I think, wanted the ending to be a somber moment of reflection on the events of the game. I was just left feeling deeply unsatisfied with the whole experience.
That’s what’s stuck with me about the game. Not any particular moment, though there are many good moments. Not any puzzle, though there are many good puzzles. Just a feeling of dissatisfaction at how little I know about anything in the game. Inside is a game of questions that has absolutely no interest in providing an answer. Maybe other people will be satisfied wondering about everything and anything in the game. I was not. I’m a little surprised at how much this feeling is affecting my thoughts on the game, considering that it’s an engaging puzzler that supersedes its predecessor in every way otherwise. If there was a single thread, just one real hint as to what was going on to work with, I’d feel much better about the whole thing. Instead, I just sort of feel…empty inside.
