It's a short game with some decent puzzle mechanics. There's not much of a story or any horror elements really. It's a mediocre platformer with a sudden spike in difficulty, I don't have much else to say. 4/10 not worth 5$ maybe get it on a sale

The Inner Darkness is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. Some effort went into this one, as it uses a phasing technique that only about 40-50 other retro pixel platformer shovelware games on Steam use. Effort also went into creating a somewhat dark narrative about the protagonist having a gut wound (I certainly feel like I've got a gut wound every time I play GameMaker Studio platformer template copy + pastes like this), all of which was wasted with the old construction kit "Look I filled out a template and that makes me a developer" laziness. One step above RPG Maker, I guess. Regardless, little to no value as a PC game for PC gamers, so let's go into the laundry list of defects.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. To make matters worse, there's no mouse input, despite this being sold on PC as if it were a PC game. This is unacceptable and somewhat insulting to PC gamers. It's a good demonstration of the poor attitude the developer has towards PC gamers, and this attitude has resulted in yet another defect in this game.

While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this game was never accepted on the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.

Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.

A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Nauris Amatnieks has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the game. But this only appears around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.

The Inner Darkness has the completely unrealistic cash grab price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.

Nice art, a few decent puzzles, simple controls that feel pretty organic. I just can't recommend the game at the price tag. Pick it up if it's on sale and you want to spend an hour enjoying a unique little platformer.

I must give the game it's dues. It really uses as much of its limited mechanics as it can without ever really overstaying its welcome (as you can see, the whole thing took only slightly more than an hour to beat, playing suboptimally). Even a couple of core mechanics which I feared would become annoying never became so, they just added a slight illusion of urgency.

The puzzles were on the easy side, with more than a few times me overthinking what they needed, but several did feel clever enough (even if they were never particularly lateral). A few of them did easily screw you over due to movement rather than misunderstanding the core puzzle, but that was partially on me for rushing.

The "purely" platforming sections is where things got a bit jankier at times, but nothing unsurmountable. The worst thing I can say about them is that sometimes the dimension switching had you collide into spikes you didn't know were there, a fortunately infrequent occurence in a world with little penalty for death thanks to the generous checkpoints.

So anyways, what went wrong which pushed me, an usual review optimist, into negative recommendation territory? Well, the plot. Without spoiling anything specific, it's cliche in terms of indie game story, but that is not why. Various elements presented throughout felt unresolved (I guess they were symbolic?), and the climax (and subsequent ending one short room afterwards) came practically out of nowhere after a couple of setpiece rooms, the latter of which had a one-off gimmick which worked so-so (it felt good when it worked, but you had to figure out the slightly changed controls so that led to multiple deaths and repetition). It's not a bad story per se, but for a story driven game my expectations were cut and I was left fundamentally unsatisfied with the conclusion of the whole experience.

P.S. If you wonder why the previous two platformers I've reviewed this month, which I ostentibly criticized more, did get recommendations, it's because I feel they better fulfilled what they wanted to do and what they presented to the player, so my gut pointed me towards a positive. Or maybe they're just cute and that won me over? I'm unsure about the last point.

It just feels like someone made a mediocre flash game for newgrounds or something and then decided to make it an overpriced steam game instead. Its not fun or interesting in any way. This has been sitting in my game library for a few years because i got stuck on a puzzle and didn't care enough to look up a guide. that should give you an idea of how boring it is.
it does get some points for good pixel art and the flesh wall, but its still a 3/10.

Liked the pixel art. Finished in ~3 hours. The inner monologue is repetitive and insubstantial. The story is nothing to write home about. You can probably skip this one.

Far from me to decide whether on not a developer should receive a small monetary incentive, for investing time learning a new skill.
Nevertheless, it's hard to recommend a small game concept, when it has been done countless times before it.
Other than having a rather inappropriate end twist, The Inner Darkness is your average puzzle platformer, except it lasts for about 40 min.
With only 2 mechanics, dimensional shift and physics puzzles. It doesn't really stand out from all the other similar games already available on steam. Games that don't make you stack boxes on every screen, hopefully.
Ideally game ideas that aren't part of the biggest trends for beginner level developers.

These are the hardest sort of games to review; there's nothing wrong with this game - it's OK, I had a decent enough time playing it, but it doesn't do anything special. The art design is good, but it uses the same assets far too often. The gameplay is good, but it doesn't have a lot of variety or challenge. The story has potential but never does anything with that potential - the ending is pretty much exactly what you'd expect, and there's no explanation for the metaphor of the gameplay.

In the end, I have to go with a No on this game just because I will have forgotten it by tomorrow. If you just want a cheap platformer with a fun horror aesthetic to kill a little time, though, you could still definitely do worse.

3/10 nothing new here. all stuff you can find in other games

Disclaimer: Got this for $1,50 at https://www.chrono.gg/ when they had it for sale there.

Not recommended simply because it lacks in vartion of puzzles. It has a boring and too obvious story that you don´t feel engaged, at all. Annoying platforming and just a soundtrack of "boop,boop,boop,boop,boop, beep beep beep beep beep "ba-dumm" bfffffssch".


You know those games that you start up and almost immediately go: "Yeaahhhh I know where this is going" and "yup, it´s about that topic isn´t it?" and when said topic shows up you´re like "called it!". Smug as you might be (and you ARE!) there are some games like that that are SO GOOD that you don´t care.

Take one of my 2017 most snuttiest games* Hyper Light Drifter for instance! I mean, if HLD´s developers name wasn´t a huge F@u€!NG clue already (HEART MACHINE) the game is super obviously a metaphor about fighting a heart condition of some sort. You guess it right of the bat!
However, that game is good, brilliant even. One might also say that Hyper Light Drifter is miles better than Zelda: A Link to the Past! In fact, I do say that quite often!

This game is deffo´s not worth €4,99...which in writing is approx. $5. Based on a hastily, sloppy and might not be accurate at all search on google.

To the developer behind The Inner Darkness I say, sorry if you´re affected by the illness portrayed in the game. My most humblest of regards to you.

Although I cannot say that I found this game enjoyable.
I found the puzzles that you solve by finding bugs and glitches lackluster, boring and frustrating. One time I had to F£@$NG google the solution. They solved the puzzle by pushing a crate to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ edge on top of another box to make the jump, which looked so wrong and wierd that It looked like a bug! And that is NOT thinking outside the box!!

Speaking of...almost every puzzle contains boxes that you push. To the point that even the main character says something about being sick of the boxes. Then why use those puzzles so much?

The aestethics are fine, they work! However, that is also the problem. You see they don´t make you feel engaged either! It´s just a standard experience by this point.

Also, the soundtrack is dull and only consists of boops, beeps and psssch sounds with the occasionnal chiptune drumming and such. I just finnished playing the game but can´t remember the music, which might give you a clue.

Don´t recommend it at all!


* "most snuttiest games of 2017" = a [fictional] list of games I enjoyed playing that year.