I can understand why this game gets such overwhelmingly positive reviews, but to me the atmosphere is lost to the poorly handled puzzle aspects of the game. This is my spoiler-free critique of Inside.

Inside is the story of survival of a young boy against all odds: physical barriers, dogs, people, and other such adversaries in the game. The gameplay against this narrative comes in three flavours, which the game rotates through as you play: escaping adversity, puzzle solving, and spectacle.

Spectacle I have no aversion to – the game nails its art style & atmosphere, and has thoroughly enjoyable eye candy. Sometimes the sections felt a little long to me, but I typically play more action intensive games, so this isn't a huge surprise.

Both escaping adversity and puzzle solving are entirely mechanically devoid – that is to say that the challenge isn't knowing what to do and struggling to do it, it's not knowing what to do, but once you work it out it should be trivial to pull off. There's nothing wrong with this, it just means the game places its difficulty/challenge in finding the solution, which will be important to consider later when I discuss my thoughts on the puzzles.

The character’s animations come across rather out of place in a lot of the escaping adversity sections of the game, where the boy moves at a comfortable jog or light run, despite having a ferocious dog running full pelt behind you with clear intent to kill. This can feel frustrating, because if you don't quite have the solution to the puzzle in time, it feels like you probably could have survived if the protagonist just put a liiiiittle bit more effort in. This bring me onto the main thing I disliked about these escaping adversity sections in general: they require trial & fatal error to overcome. In my opinion, putting a time limit on puzzles with your life is at stake is not fun, and it's the core mechanic of these parts of the game. It damages immersion in my opinion and makes solving the problems feel unrewarding when you consider how many deaths it took you to get there.

To talk more generally about the puzzles – regardless as to whether you’re being hunted down during them – they are not designed to facilitate first time or improvised success. Timing windows are narrow where present, and the game does nothing to help or guide the player. In dedicated puzzle sections where there is no imminent threat of death, performing the necessary experimentation ends up being time consuming and slow, primarily due to the size of the environments and how slow your character moves.

The final nit I'll pick with Inside is the size of the environments. Especially frequent during the spectacle sections, you can end up without a clear indication of where you need to go, and thus simply have to run in one direction until you find a wall, and then turn around. The game's achievements lead me to believe there are more secrets hidden throughout the levels, however more often than not I found myself having explored the ‘wrong’ way intentionally to no reward other than the boring return journey. Maybe I’m just bad at finding secrets, but it felt like the game was actively trying to disincentivise this ‘explore the other way first’ style of play.

To conclude, I did complete the game and enjoy its ending. I didn't feel overly compelled by the story due to its obscurity, and I was more than ready to be done with the puzzles by the time I got to the end – and that's for a short three and a half hour game.

I can understand why this game gets such overwhelmingly positive reviews, but to me the atmosphere is lost to the poorly handled puzzle aspects of the game. This is my spoiler-free critique of Inside. Inside is the story of survival of a young boy against all odds: physical barriers, dogs, people, and other such adversaries in the game. The gameplay against this narrative comes in three flavours, which the game rotates through as you play: escaping adversity, puzzle solving, and spectacle. Spectacle I have no aversion to – the game nails its art style & atmosphere, and has thoroughly enjoyable eye candy. Sometimes the sections felt a little long to me, but I typically play more action intensive games, so this isn't a huge surprise. Both escaping adversity and puzzle solving are entirely mechanically devoid – that is to say that the challenge isn't knowing what to do and struggling to do it, it's not knowing what to do, but once you work it out it should be trivial to pull off. There's nothing wrong with this, it just means the game places its difficulty/challenge in finding the solution, which will be important to consider later when I discuss my thoughts on the puzzles. The character’s animations come across rather out of place in a lot of the escaping adversity sections of the game, where the boy moves at a comfortable jog or light run, despite having a ferocious dog running full pelt behind you with clear intent to kill. This can feel frustrating, because if you don't quite have the solution to the puzzle in time, it feels like you probably could have survived if the protagonist just put a liiiiittle bit more effort in. This bring me onto the main thing I disliked about these escaping adversity sections in general: they require trial & fatal error to overcome. In my opinion, putting a time limit on puzzles with your life is at stake is not fun, and it's the core mechanic of these parts of the game. It damages immersion in my opinion and makes solving the problems feel unrewarding when you consider how many deaths it took you to get there. To talk more generally about the puzzles – regardless as to whether you’re being hunted down during them – they are not designed to facilitate first time or improvised success. Timing windows are narrow where present, and the game does nothing to help or guide the player. In dedicated puzzle sections where there is no imminent threat of death, performing the necessary experimentation ends up being time consuming and slow, primarily due to the size of the environments and how slow your character moves. The final nit I'll pick with Inside is the size of the environments. Especially frequent during the spectacle sections, you can end up without a clear indication of where you need to go, and thus simply have to run in one direction until you find a wall, and then turn around. The game's achievements lead me to believe there are more secrets hidden throughout the levels, however more often than not I found myself having explored the ‘wrong’ way intentionally to no reward other than the boring return journey. Maybe I’m just bad at finding secrets, but it felt like the game was actively trying to disincentivise this ‘explore the other way first’ style of play. To conclude, I did complete the game and enjoy its ending. I didn't feel overly compelled by the story due to its obscurity, and I was more than ready to be done with the puzzles by the time I got to the end – and that's for a short three and a half hour game.