Inside
Black, white and red all over…
Depending on how much you’ve seen of Inside, with its switches and its jumping and its casual disregard for the safety of small children, you might think it’s a puzzle game, or a platformer, or even a lo-fi horror. In truth, it’s simultaneously all of these things, and none. What it is, is a true experience from start to finish: a powerful study of adolescence, purpose and consequence, with a casual dollop of the bizarre thrown in for good measure.
You are Boy: a faceless, fragile little creature whom you’ll want to protect and coddle from the moment he drops, wincing, into the opening frame. Through wonderfully effective animation and sound design, developers Playdead sell every stumble, fall, and act of violence he suffers. Having such a defenceless protagonist is incredibly affecting, and Inside doesn’t shirk from the horrors of the Boy’s quest (whatever that quest might be). He’ll be suffocated, shot, disintegrated, and drowned, and you’ll be punched in the gut with every demise he suffers.
And suffer, he will. Boy inhabits a seemingly dystopian landscape, beginning in rural outskirts that give way to cold, grey tower blocks and increasingly industrial cityscapes, and it is not kind to little boys who tread where they shouldn’t. The residents of this world, with their suspect motivations, are to be feared and eluded. The 2.5D levels play nicely into this, allowing you to briefly survey threats in the background before making a run for it, when the danger merges with your own plane of movement and things get…tense.
Inside divides its time between these pursuit sequences and more relaxed exploration, though the underlying sense of unease never relents. This allows it to maintain a real urgency, even during moments of puzzle-solving when you’re not truly at risk. Respite clearly isn’t high on Playdead’s agenda.
The puzzles themselves are mostly well-positioned, providing just enough challenge to delay you without making you push your head through the nearest wall. They avoid contrivance, too, largely blending with the surroundings rather than having their components plonked down within the world, to hell with artistic vision. All the classics are here: switches, buttons, lifts, ropes, but they exist where they should, and the mission is all the better for it. To that end, it certainly helps that the environments are so intuitive. Does it look like you should be able to shift that pallet? THEN YOU CAN SHIFT THE GODDAMN PALLET. The gorgeous surroundings and impressive incidental detail present a world both alive, and lived-in.
However, this visual sales pitch would be nothing without the diamond-encrusted cherry on the cake. The deft and subtle animation on display in Inside is nothing short of exceptional. I have no idea about the technical wizz-wazz behind what they’ve achieved, but I know it has more heart and impact that anything I’ve seen from the industry big-boys of late. Seriously, I’d divorce my wife and marry this animation (if such things were legal and it were…y’know…physically possible to wed a concept). Your affection for Boy simply wouldn’t exist without it. The slight recovery when he falls a bit too far; the glance over his shoulder when a pack of dogs is inches from ending him; the convulsion of his little chest when water is filling his lungs…he’s a beautiful creation. Indeed, the developers have been smart enough not to limit this to Boy, filling even the briefest of NPC cameos with the same vigour and life.
I can’t stress enough how well this symbiosis of the game’s systems and presentation works. It provides a remarkable sense of achievement and progression knowing that you haven’t just completed Puzzle Level 2.3, but you’ve outwitted a shady organisation’s attempts to stop intruders bypassing their security. This dedication extends to many of the more creative puzzle mechanics, like a charged, consequence-heavy game of Simon Says, or the mind control devices which you appropriate for your own ends, despite the questionable ethics of doing so. They’re game mechanics, sure, but ones which had a place in this world well before you and Boy were around.
Ah yes: the Boy and his mission. It’s fair to say you help him carry out a few…debatable tasks (morally speaking) during his inexorable march from left to right. He’s not violent, but he is selfish. Innocents will be used, against their will, for his own ends, and he thinks nothing of casting them aside when their usefulness is spent. It’s powerful, especially when you have so little clue what he’s after. The fact that the conclusion, then, provides very little clear emotional pay-off is an interesting move, but an ultimately disappointing one. Let me be clear: the big reveal will knock your head clean off your shoulders, but for very different reasons. It’s not too much of a spoiler to say that the last 20 minutes of this sub-four-hour title are wonderfully unexpected, cathartic and one hell of a contrast to the rest, but I expected something more…personal. Not for me, but for Boy. I’m all for ambiguity, but to be given so little…it’s frustrating. Perhaps the “true” ending (unlocked after finding 13 secrets within the campaign) will be more forthcoming.
Such concerns might seem overblown considering Inside is pitched as a stylised puzzle-platformer, but it’s so much more than that. Over the course of my journey, it occurred to me how much DNA it shares with the so-called “walking simulators" that have been both enjoyed and abhorred by the community in equal measure over the last few years. It’s unlikely you’ll see typical “ITS NOT EVEN A REAL GAME FFS”-style accusations thrown in its direction, but Playdead’s dedication to a sense of place, teasing narrative and questionably-intentioned avatar means Inside slots nicely alongside genre highlights like Gone Home or Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Like them, this could be watched rather than played, and has the potential to be just as profound an experience for the viewer as it is for the player.
Some people will despise it. Christ, I venture on to the internet from time to time, some people do despise it. But I think they’re missing the point. Inside doesn’t have puzzles that make your brain bleed from your ears, or require that you have the dexterity of a caffeine-addled Pikachu to traverse its obstacles. But it takes a whole load of small elements, polishes them to a blinding sheen and injects them into a striking and haunting setting which you’ll still be thinking about long after that memorable finale has come and gone. Add to that a disconcertingly emotive player-character, and you’ve got something truly special. A sum of its parts, but far more too.
