Inside Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/6/2021)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Inside

Developer: Playdead

Publisher: Playdead

Genre(s): Cinematic Platformer

Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, IOS, Switch

Release Date: June 29, 2016

Can lightning strike in the same place twice? Of course, it can, and it often depends on the elevation of the place or objects that it’s striking. Why then is this question a common myth and or rhetorical question that people ask? It’s because lightning is an ambiguous force in which its effectiveness of it on the collective human consciousness relies on the random nature that lightning is perceived to have. No one would scurry indoors if lightning was a creature of habit, striking the same place over and over like that piece of land owed it money. I bring this up because it seems like Danish game developer Playdead was anticipating the same level of effectiveness by striking the same place twice with their lightning which was Limbo. Instead of making a sequel, Playdead followed up their 2010 indie hit with a spiritual successor called Inside. I make no exaggerated claim here that Inside is the same game as Limbo. I understand that indie developers may not have the big-budget, glossy attributes that triple-A developers have. Still, they at least have the ability to produce something discernible from their previous outputs. Inside is the same foreboding, linear odyssey of ambiguity crafted as a 2D puzzle platformer that Limbo was. The only difference is Inside has a crisper frame rate thanks to next-generation technology, and it has a less monochrome color pallet. I’d lambaste Playdead for releasing the same game twice, but there is something crucial to Inside that doesn’t make it a carbon copy of Limbo. Instead of diverting from the gameplay of Limbo to make Inside discernible from it, they’ve added more depth to the narrative to try to make something more substantial.

The uncanny resemblance Inside has to Limbo starts to become apparent from the beginning scene. A young boy in a red shirt sans glowing eyes is running around in the woods with an aura of panic and unease. The environment doesn’t look as alien and hostile as the one from Limbo, but the player will soon learn not to come to conclusions like this upon first impressions. A few yards into the forest, the kid comes across two guys talking to each other near a generator. The kid will briskly jump off of a ledge and snap a twig in the process. One of the men hears this and turns on a flashlight. If the player is caught in the flashlight’s reach, the men run after the boy and subdue him, and the player can’t do anything to escape their grasp resulting in a “death.”

Further into the forest, a dog will chase the boy down while barking violently and gnashing its razor-sharp teeth. If any of these dogs catch the boy, they’ll tear out what appears to be his trachea in a bloody mauling that signals the kid's obvious doom. Any of these things that are most likely familiar to the player would’ve been refreshing in Limbo but are far more threatening than anything in that game here. Inside is practically a stealth game in this regard. I claimed in my review of Limbo that it was not a horror game like everybody described it, but I would make somewhat of a case for Inside. I believe that all effective horror media needs to have some grounding in something that resembles reality. The world of Limbo was far too ethereal to hold any substantial weight in the realm of reality. The monochrome visuals and the ambiguity of everything in the game made it feel too much like a dream. As they say, a dream no longer becomes scary once the person wakes up. Inside is far more grounded thanks to the more realistic, albeit depleted-looking, world the protagonist finds themselves in. The environments in Inside are a little more domesticated and familiar to the player than the ones with the unvarying visuals presented in Limbo. The setting of Inside has a looming aura of oppression that gives the game its tension. The land that makes up this setting looks like it’s been sucked dry, almost like the mist that permeates this land is the exhaust from the tailpipe of the domineering machine that runs this place. Either the boy is a native of this land, or he’s on the outskirts of somewhere completely without hope, trying to find his way out or find aid. The horror here is not a naturalistic one where the land is inherently dangerous but rather a man-made terror with sentience. There’s something more harrowing about horror with an agenda rather than an environment that is just meant to be visually spooky.

Before I get ahead of myself trying to decipher the experience of Inside, I can’t properly review a game without even slightly discussing its gameplay, even if it’s a minute detail. As I’ve said, Inside and Limbo aren’t merely two games made by the same company. Inside is practically a carbon copy of Playdead’s last title in terms of gameplay. The player will run on a 2D axis sequentially with little interruption besides the platformer puzzles that add a hint of zest to the player’s journey. The platforming is minimal, and the player will most likely fail many times attempting to do these before they succeed. The description I just gave for Inside’s gameplay could easily be the one for Limbos, but there are a few differences. Inside feels much more lenient with its checkpoints and individual puzzles than its predecessor. After dying during a puzzle in Limbo, the game would take the player back into action without giving them a chance to prepare themselves. Inside, on the other hand, lets the player prepare for the challenge, which feels much better than the game propelling the player to their imminent dooms. Inside has fewer sections in which the player has to act fast before something kills them, but the few moments where these come to play are much better executed. Inside adds a few new features like controlling a submarine with a propulsion mechanic, swimming, and controlling a mass of flesh with its physics. One gameplay feature that is essential to the core of Inside’s vague narrative is the mind control feature. Limbo had a mind-controlling slug that would latch onto the player and control their movement, but Inside has turned this into a bonafide mechanic. The protagonist will latch their heads onto a mechanism hanging from the ceiling at many points in the game. This will trigger one of the innocuous, slouching pale people the protagonist encounters in swarms throughout the game who controls almost exactly like the protagonist.

Why is a mind control mechanic so pertinent to Inside? Because it highlights the core themes of conformity that the game conveys in its narrative. Discussing fascism concerning Inside’s “story” is relevant because the dystopian themes are readily present. However, merely dissecting the game and coming to fascism as a conclusion is scratching the surface. Inside makes the player consider what the ultimate goal of fascism is, and that is conformity to an extreme degree. The colors in the world of Inside are dismal and murky, but the comparatively vibrant red shirt of the protagonist stands out. This red shirt is a subtle symbol the protagonist wears to represent his role as someone in this society who is different. He’s a beacon of hope for this world and a reflection of how this world used to be before it fell to an unknown oppressive entity. The fact that the protagonist is a child might also have some semblance. All of the mindless drones that walk without any autonomy are bigger than the protagonist, so I’m assuming that they are all adults. Perhaps the conformity presented in Inside is a comment on the capitalist machine we all venture into as adults? Either or, there is an imperative on individualism and how government control seeks to eliminate it because they see it as a threat. I can’t think of any better way the game illustrates this other than the protagonist walking in unison with the zombified underlings, being punished for falling slightly out of line with their movements.

There is a standout portion in the climax of the game that is far more notable than the scene I just described. The protagonist will venture to what looks like a scientific facility with people in lab coats scrambling around a dim building with high ceilings. The protagonist will come across a pressurized rocket which turns out to be a trap. The protagonist gets sucked into an aquarium with a large group of people in lab coats observing him. The propulsion of the rocket engine has stripped the protagonist of his clothes, leaving him stark naked without his red shirt. In the center of this aquarium is a giant mound of flesh with various appendages held still in the water. Once the protagonist frees this abomination, he morphs into the mound, and now the player controls it. This odious mass of people breaks through the glass of its watery cell and wreaks havoc on the lab while the men in lab coats run away screaming. As the player tries their best to control this sentient blob, its journey breaks open a wooden barrier which causes it to tumble violently down the mountainside and come to a complete halt at a misty lakefront. This change of pace from playing as the boy was a total shock for me and probably for most who played this game. Suddenly, the player is manning the blob from Akira and demolishing everything around it while still maintaining the core gameplay the same. The blob even squishes a guy into a pulp and wears his blood like tribal paint (one of my favorite moments in the game, by the way). It’s a fun way to change up the gameplay after playing as the boy for so long. It’s also something that completely deviates from Limbo. Playing as this blob isn’t just for shock value but carries weight in Inside’s themes of conformity. What better way to illustrate people without their individuality as a giant globule of flesh? From the observation of it from the people in lab coats, this blob was a procedural experiment conducted to test the extremes of keeping people as a collective unit without any kind of volition. This collective is also the force that brings down their oppressors. This is something the kid couldn’t do on his own, so perhaps the game is suggesting that one must sacrifice individuality for a greater cause? It’s an ironic case of playing devil’s advocate to keep theories afloat for the player. As far as the ending is concerned, many people argue that it’s bleak. However, I feel as if the blob ending up at the bottom of a mountain on a beachside signifies that all of these people have broken free from their captors, albeit under less-than-ideal circumstances. Whatever Playdead was attempting to convey, this result from a heart-pounding climax is the perfect way to end the game.

Normally, I’d be completely underwhelmed and apathetic about a game that does not attempt to deviate from a previous one. Playdead saved a lot of money on Inside because it functions the same way as Limbo. It has the same gameplay, vague narrative, and artfully bleak undertones that I liked about their previous game. The thing is, I already experienced all of those things with Limbo. While playing through Inside, I couldn’t help but constantly compare the game to Limbo and try to figure out if the logical reason why I was enjoying Inside was simply that I liked Limbo to begin with. After playing through Inside again, I’ve realized that this might be a case of Limbo being a prototype for Inside. The substance of Inside compared to Limbo far exceeds it and left a bigger impression on me. My emotions dropped just like the blob did off the cliff and resonated with me more than the seemingly cyclical loop of Limbo. Playdead made the same goddamn game, and it managed to be slightly better than the previous one. As of writing this, Playdead has not released a third game. Don’t get too confident, guys. You can only get away with repeating yourselves once.