Back in 2010, the idea of a platformer being anything other than a cutesy game for little kids was an unheard-of phenomenon.
The "arthouse" gaming scene was almost nonexistent, and many independently-developed titles were still having trouble getting off the ground. Even successful indie games like Braid were often written off by gamers as "something for kids."
Then, a little game called Limbo hit the Xbox Live Arcade marketplace, and fans ate it up. The dark aesthetic, the realistic physics, the brutality of its world — gamers claimed that Limbo wasn't another sprite-based romp through a colorful world, but a powerful game with a serious message.
Whether or not that's true differs based on opinion, but it's easy to see the sort of effect that Limbo's success had on the industry. 2D platformers with serious stories are everywhere now — it's no longer a niche market.
It's been six years since Limbo first debuted, and the team behind the game has returned to the sub-genre it helped create. Inside is, in many ways, a spiritual successor to Playdead's last major game — but is it a worthy follow-up?
Simply put, Inside doesn't feature much of a story.
Players take on the role of a young boy in a red shirt as he makes his way through a dark, eerie, empty world ... and that's about it. There are story-driven moments throughout the game, but there's no context provided for any of them. Things just sort of happen — and while a few of these events can be exhilarating, there's no sense of a larger story arc outside of these individual moments.
As a result, there's no real motivation for players to keep moving forward. To be fair, there's always a desire to see what the game comes up with, but the slogs of puzzle-solving and platforming in between these moments don't do much to keep players engaged. The world itself is easily the most interesting part of the game — though, much like the story, there's no explanation or connection between the different events or environments.
Admittedly, the ending sequence does stand out from the rest of the story, but the disappointing non-ending will leave players feeling like the developers simply ran out of ideas. Overall, Inside presents some genuinely intriguing concepts ... but sadly, the game never really capitalizes on them.
