Inside is another fun, dark adventure in the same vein as Limbo. It last just long enough to remain interesting without over-staying its welcome.
Gameplay
You play as a boy with no name, and are immediately thrust into danger when you realize that it appears everyone else is looking for you and trying to kill you. You will be chased by people, by dogs, and by a creepy aquatic creature throughout the 6 hour adventure. The game alternates between chase scenes where you're focused on speed and precision to avoid detection or run away from whatever threat you are being chased by, and fun puzzles to solve where you can take your time but have to really plan out how to get to the next area of the game. I enjoyed most of the puzzles, they were hard enough that it made you think but not so hard that you spent half an hour trying to figure out how to get to the next room. The puzzles changed enough that you would have to build on what you had learned throughout the game, changing it up so it never got repetitive or boring. I particularly enjoyed the puzzles where you had to lead a group of "zombies" around to have them help open doors, throw you into the air, or weigh down a platform. The chase scenes were genuinely terrifying; my heart rate was definitely up whenever I barely made it to a platform before being subjected to a grisly death. You will die a lot in this game. Luckily, there is no real penalty for dying. There are no lives, no coins, the only things to collect are orbs which give you trophies that are completely optional. You generally just start off exactly where you left, allowing you to try the same puzzle or chase scene without having to replay vast swaths of the game leading up to it. I always appreciate when a game doesn't make me repeat crap I did 20 minutes ago just to try to jump off a platform exactly right.
The game does have it's minor annoyances; I can't stand it when games feel like "trial and error" instead of giving you clues to figure out what you need to do ahead. Too often, Inside feels like "trial and error" where you have to jump off a cliff several times just to see what's there, and die several times in the process, before you figure out the way ahead. The lax rules for dying help here, but it still feels cheap at time. The aquatic creature was also a gripe for me, the sections with her always felt like trial and error and made the game feel like a chore rather than fun at times. However, the end of the game redeems itself by completely flipping the script and letting you plow through everything that previously was able to kill you off, it's nice to feel powerful after feeling totally vulnerable the entire rest of the game.
Story
This is one of those ambivalent, artsy stories where you're supposed to decide for yourself what the game is about. I can't tell if it's just lazy storytelling or the game was just thrown together and people are reading way too much into it. Essentially, it appears that people are making zombie slaves and you M you're supposed to be one of the zombies but you somehow got away. Maybe you were supposed to be a zombie but managed to get away and are now trying to escape, or maybe you're trying to save the zombies from the facility, or maybe you're just trying to destroy the facility, it's unclear. There are no cut scenes, no dialogue, nothing to help you out in understanding except looking around at the facility and seeing what's going on. Eventually, you do escape the facility, sort of, if you are even you anymore, and it's unclear if you live or die. The end kind of felt like a cheap way to end the story, but I enjoyed plowing around nonetheless. You can take this as a fun distraction or write your dissertation on the parallels between modern society and the world in Inside, either way seems like a fine way to digest the game.
Graphics and Music
There honestly isn't much music to speak of, the game is purposely very quiet and sometimes totally silent for a good chunk of the game. However, when you solve a puzzle or get close to something dangerous, the music will pick up to alert you that something is about to change, which I found pretty cool. I wish the game was less silent, but I get why they chose to do it that way.
The graphics are black and white, and way more black than white. It's straight up impossible to see at several points throughout the game, and sometimes it can be really frustrating because you can't figure out the way ahead just because the game made it impossible to see a box you need, and you have to resort to aimlessly groping around to find it. Other than that minor gripe, however, the graphics are really beautiful. They fit well with the theme of the game, no one has faces, the shading is downright gorgeous, and you will find yourself lost in the world that these graphics have created. They did a great job for the most part with the art direction of the game.
8/10