When a game like Inside comes along, it gives one pause. Its greatness is hard to quantify and regurgitate into written word for the simple reason that there are so few, (if any at all), other games one can compare it to. 2009’s Limbo is the only work that comes to mind, both having been created by Danish developer Playdead. Yet, for all the heights Limbo was able to reach, Inside is able to match it and increase it multiple times over. I must also confess up front that I completed Inside a week ago. I’m only now writing the review simply because I needed that time to let the story it tells digest in my mind. Even now, one week later, I am as unsure of my feelings about Inside as I was when the final credits rolled. This game is great. There is no debate in that. Putting a finger on it and trying to put it into words is where I’m lost. There are a million and one ways this game could be interpreted, and yet despite all the vagaries and uncertainty it leaves you with, Inside knows WHAT it is more than any other game I’ve played.

The game opens and you’re immediately on the run. Navigating through a foreboding forest while being pursued by masked assailants. No back story. No answers. You just run. The resemblances to Limbo are instantly recognizable. You navigate the world as an unnamed boy. Starting in the woods, the environment slowly bleeds into a nightmarish industrial wasteland. Before long, however, Inside surpasses Limbo in nearly every way possible. A total of six years came and went between the releases of the two games and its evident in the final result. Everything about Inside feels handcrafted like a sculpture or painting. The passion of the creators has seemingly been poured into every pixel and every frame as if every waking hour of those six years were spent in blind dedication to fine tuning every nuance of the game. My jaw dropped several times over the rendering of the landscapes which walk the line between bleak expressionism and the surreal. In art direction alone, Inside is a masterpiece.

I won’t spoil the story Inside has to tell. That would be criminal. But part of its wonder lies in how the story is told through its puzzles. With every new mechanic that is introduced so are five more questions and grim possibilities of the macabre dreamscape your avatar is traversing. Is this possibly a critique on the modern gamer? Who is really in control here? With the constant threat of a brutal death always nipping at your heals, the puzzles and the process of solving them become increasingly more and more a matter of life and death. I personally only every got stuck for no more than a couple of minutes on the various puzzles, but as I stated before, these puzzles are not meant to break your brain. Rather, they are vital narrative tools that offer a glimpse into the games environment. And the controls? Your stick moves you left and right, one button makes you jump, another makes you grab objects. It may sound like a typical platformer, but friends, absolutely nothing about this game is typical.

As with Limbo, death is at times unavoidable in Inside, yet both games handle it with a varying tone. There was always a razor thin layer of dark humor that shrouded Limbo. The various deaths your avatar would succumb to were without a doubt ghastly. However, there was element to it that could, at times, elicit a chuckle simply out of the absurdity of its grotesque animations. Nothing about Inside is humorous. The deaths linger just long enough to make the player uncomfortable, and even leave them with a tinge of guilt. Real consequence is placed on the timing and solving of puzzles. As fantastical as the world of Inside can be, death is still death. Death is still inevitable. Death is still ugly.

Inside represents an evolution in the medium and how stories are told within it. The hum and clank of abandoned industrial infrastructure, the grim choir of a pack of barking dogs, and the shortness of breath after your avatar makes a narrow escape spin a yarn that dialogue never could. You’re like Alice, falling down a rabbit hole of horrors towards an unknown fate. The success and acclaim Inside is generating will not go unnoticed. Both triple A blockbusters and the smallest of indies will recognize this, and begin experimenting themselves. This could be the dawn of a creative gold rush, folks! Get excited!

Conclusion

 Inside represents an evolution in video game storytelling.