Quick Review: INSIDE

About as helpless as you can be, in a situation way beyond your abilities… Now that’s good horror.

Must stay hidden from the flashlights.

A creation of Playdead released on July 7th, 2016, INSIDE is a narrative-driven platform horror game. You are a child fleeing from mysterious masked men, who are anything but friendly… They’ll chase the kid down, send their throat-ripping dogs at him… The poor kid. He eventually manages to flee from them, hiding underwater, and soon finds other traces of civilization – a farm. That’s all fine and good so far, but he can’t hide in there forever, he has to keep moving forward. Over time, he reaches the city. But that’s not the creepiest thing he finds… How about helmets that let him remote-control other humans? Now that’s several extra levels of creepy.

Even the pigs are evil here!

And honestly, that is all I should say about this game’s plot. Let's just say, it gets worse. The child can only walk, jump, and grab things to move them; no attacking options. But that’s okay; it helps to emphasize the protagonist’s helplessness. But he’s still pretty resourceful, often reacting to things even if he's still under your control (such as acting like a zombie in a place where it's necessary).

As this is a horror game, the color palette is limited, almost inexistent in places. The rare splotches of color are the child’s shirt, puzzle-relevant items, and any of the rare times where light peeks through. The ambiance is heavy, the places are always dark. It’s not pleasant to look at, but then again, it’s not meant to be pleasant. It’s so grim in places that I had to stop playing, it’s a bit overwhelming at times.

At least you get to have control over zombie-like people.

Instead of jump scares, the game masterfully sets up the dangers, and shows exactly what happens to the kid if he’s caught or killed. Captured by guards? Sedated or chloroformed. Attack dogs? Throat ripped out, jaws to jugular. When there’s more than one dog, it’s fun to watch. (That was sarcasm, for the record.) Fall from a great height? An audible snap of the spine. That human-like thing in the water? Don’t get me started on that fucking thing! And it only gets freakier from there. It’s brutal, it’s hard to look at, especially with the noises accompanying each death. I should also mention that barring some instances, there’s very little music. Nothing makes a fictional world heavy like a lack of music. (If you’ve seen a film that tries this for an effect of style, you know what I mean.)

It's almost like that camera knows that something is up.
Must be the red shirt.

The lack of spoken or written word throughout means that you can only use environmental cues for information. All of the pieces of the puzzle are there - the main elements are clear as day, but you may need to carefully observe in order to get the finer details of the plot. You also can’t really assign a personality or traits to the child or any of the other people, be they captors or victims. Considering the horrifying story, that might be for the better. Oh, there is more to discover if you’re willing to partake in the side-quest of finding 14 orbs hidden through the game, attached to machines, found in secret places. Getting them all even unlocks a second ending. (And I’ve seen the main ending. It’s… something. I don’t want to spoil it, though.)

THAT FUCKING THING IN THE WATER

This game worked better for me as horror than any title that went for jump scares. A combination of the child’s helplessness, the scary implications of everything, the very dark lighting and borderline-nonexistent color palette, the heavy ambiance without music, everything fits together to make INSIDE… well, perhaps not a perfect horror game, but one that every current and future horror game dev could learn a couple things from.

…well, if they haven’t already, considering the game was released over four years ago.

INSIDE is available on Steam for 19.99$.