Inside

April 15, 2017

Inside

Inside (stylized as INSIDE) is a puzzle-platformer adventure video game developed and published by Playdead and first released in June 2016. In the game, the player controls a young boy in a dystopic world, solving environmental puzzles while avoiding death in a 2.5D sidescrolling fashion, thematically and visually following up on the 2010 monochromatic video game Limbo.

Playdead started working on Inside shortly after the release of Limbo. Initially, the company started with the same custom game engine they used for Limbo, but later switched to Unity to simplify development. They developed rendering routines to give the game a signature look and which they later released as open source. The game was partially funded by a grant from the Danish Film Institute.

A nameless red-shirted boy slides down a rocky incline. While running through a forest, he encounters masked guards with flashlights, as well as vehicles with mounted spotlights. He escapes the guards, then crosses a road where a block has been set up with more vehicles and guards, to a farm where parasitic worms cause pigs to run rampant. The boy uses the farm animals and equipment to escape to a seemingly-abandoned city where lines of zombie-like people are moved through mind control. Beyond the city is a large factory of flooded rooms, a shock wave atrium, and a laboratory environment where scientists are performing underwater experiments on bodies.^[4]

While traversing these areas, the boy uses a mind-control helmet to solve puzzles by controlling lifeless grey bodies. The boy eventually comes across an underwater siren-like creature that attaches a device onto him. This allows the boy not only to utilize mind control without a helmet, but also to breathe underwater.

Continuing through the office and laboratories, the boy eventually sees many of the scientists running toward a large spherical container. There the boy sees a large blob-like creature, the Huddle,^[5] made up of humanoid arms, legs, and heads connected to four rods in the container. After disconnecting them, the boy is pulled into the creature.^[4]

The Huddle escapes confinement, crashing through various offices and work areas, killing some of the scientists in its path. Some scientists make attempts to capture or hinder the Huddle to no avail, while others attempt to direct it into a dark room^[6] where the Huddle is trapped in another tank. Escaping again, the Huddle breaks through a wooden wall, rolls down a thick forest hill, and rests at a grassy coastline under rays of light. The game ends with the Huddle silently and motionlessly bathing in sunlight.