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Hello! I just finished Inside, the latest (and second) game from Playdead, the Danish studio that did Limbo six years ago. It's out on Xbox One, and will be out on PC on July 7th. Anyway, I just finished it, and then, as I always do after finishing a game, I came here to read through page after page of intelligent discussion about it. Imagine, if you can, my disappointment at finding no discussion, not even a thread. I guess people are waiting for the PC release?

 

Anyway, it's a fantastic game, but know this: it's very very very similar to Limbo in most ways. It has similar controls and mechanics, the same quiet, lonely, depressing tone, and a similar structure. It's technically more adwanced, and looks and moves and sounds like a thoughtfully put together and better funded 2016 Danish puzzle platformer.

 

If you enjoyed Limbo (and if you don't know, you should try it!), you'll probably love Inside; run, jump, push and pull across a large, linear, continuous series of moody, desolate, eerie, beautiful set pieces, enjoy some light physics puzzles and some mildly exciting (but forgiving) action sequences, and finish off with one of the most creepy and satisfying video game ending sequences I've ever played.

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Yeah, not a lot of people on here own Xbones so I imagine that there aren't many people who have played it. I am a bit strapped for cash at the moment but I will definitely be picking it up the next chance I get. I loved Limbo and from what a couple of my friends have been saying and your post I think I am going to love this game too.

 

To add to that Limbo is hands down the best game I have shown non-gamers and got them to appreciate what games now are. Both my mother and sister were disappointed when I stopped playing.

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Oh yeah, I can definitely see it being a fun game to watch.

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I just finished it (on PC) :tup: . Apparently it only took me 3 hours to play through it, but it felt so much longer. It is probably due to the intensive journey. I played it via Steam link on my big TV in a quite darkened room during two quite sunny/summery days. Opening the curtains after playing the game felt like a whole day passed.

Inside's world is quite less dangerous than Limbo's, but it is way less friendly. The last part was quite a thing... I'm not sure what to make off it.

I need to go back to find the remaining hidden things.

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This one is definitely on my list for the future. No time to play it now, but someday in the future I'll get it, maybe in a sale, especially if it comes to GoG. My GoG library is growing crazy fast.

It got some bad reputation because the Steam version apparently uses Denuvo, and some people seem to have performance problems because of that. The only Denuvo game I have is DooM and that plays perfectly on my aging PC so I don't understand the complaints.

Does Denuvo mean that games can't be played offline on PC?

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So, I just finished this after my console buddy bought it so we could share.

 

At first I kind felt like a lot of stuff had been done before in Limbo and then there is this sharp right turn about halfway through and everything lights up from a gameplay perspective. Oodles of fun regardless of some repeated beats. I completely agree on the gameplay itself not being as unforgiving but that the world itself feels far more oppressive. It is a beautiful game too.

 

Favourite game of the year so far.

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Have not played Limbo, but I just finished Inside (in two sittings within a span of 12 hours). What a great game. It's superbly restrained, polished from every angle and a joy throughout. I especially loved the scene

on the farm. First there's the (fake) scare of shredding dozens of little chicks, then you fight a vicious pig and pull a worm out of its torso. I've never done that in a game before. Of course, once you go into the blob it becomes something wonderful entirely. Playful, horrifying and dazzlingly animated.

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I think this might be the most visually accomplished game I've ever seen. There's a distinct aesthetic throughout the whole thing even if the environments have a lot of variety, and the animation work is just ridiculously good.

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Just finished this. What a ride!

I wonder how much there is to piece together from environmental storytelling about how everything ties together, because it feels to me like things are somewhat disjointed, if cool.

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Well, there is a secret area (highly youtubeable) that goes a way to make a certain implication that's pretty interesting. I didn't feel the areas were that disjointed. Diverse, yes, but you're always running in the same direction and so is the theme - which never lets up in

a. wanting to hunt you

b. implying there's some sort of rounding up of zombie-like groups of people going on

c. in a horrible failed state of a society

 

(Where I loved that you see the human side of the oppressors, including people taking their children to work, or a simple submarine captain!)

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Well, there is a secret area (highly youtubeable) that goes a way to make a certain implication that's pretty interesting. I didn't feel the areas were that disjointed. Diverse, yes, but you're always running in the same direction and so is the theme - which never lets up in

a. wanting to hunt you

b. implying there's some sort of rounding up of zombie-like groups of people going on

c. in a horrible failed state of a society

 

(Where I loved that you see the human side of the oppressors, including people taking their children to work, or a simple submarine captain!)

 

Agreed, some sort of anti-AI stuff. The organisms they built became too advanced? The protagonist being one of those things that became too advanced and was thus hunted?

 

Loved the ambiguity we got from the "humans" in the game. Some chased, some ignored, some cheered you on, some ran in terror, and some sat around in a shadowy circle tricking you into falling into another tub of water that you easily escape from.

 

I'd love to see a clearly delineated storyboard of all the environments. I found the beginning of the game had a great sense of space but as I went deeper inside, I lost track of the fact that I was in the same "factory" (or was it a campus?). After the horrifying sound generator (love that!) and all of the water section, it started to feel like abstract video game levels.

 

Re the ending: after busting through a million more walls and doing a handful more puzzles as the blob, I was surprised that getting to the outside world didn't feel meaningful. This thing rolled 100 yards away from a labyrinthine building and some light shines on it. Didn't feel it. I think it had something to do with the fixed camera angle.

 

In contrast, coming out of the hatch (or whatever it was, I don't remember exactly) in Portal felt like coming up for air.

 

Some of the environmental storytelling was more head-scratching than others. Why would throwing a burning box into what looks like the bottom of a rocket cause a door to open?

 

 

My non-spoilery criticism is that it does get very tiresome when you don't do the puzzles in the correct order. Oftentimes you enter an area and can go left or right. I found myself going all the way in one direction to hit a wall. I'd then need to run all the way back to the center, then go in the other direction. Grab what I think I need, flip a switch or something. Then run all the way back in the other direction. Only to discover that I needed to re-flip the switch because it inexplicably changed something at the other end of the hallway. Some of the puzzle rooms get quite long in this way and it was maddening.

I'm not great with environmental analysis, though, so this may have just been me.  :)

 

Happy to have played it! I recommend it. I agree with all of the praise for the game, just had some negative thoughts to pour out.

 

Played it on my 4.5 year old Macbook Pro booted into Windows and it performed admirably, just starting choking up towards the end.

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Interestingly, before I started playing it a friend complained about a few areas that he considered to be full of irritating backtracking. When I played it, I guess I happened to do things in the correct way straight off the bat, with marginal backtracking, so I never experienced anything like a lull in pacing. There are a handful (really just one or two) big areas that feature multiple routes, but that's a deliberate choice to stop you right there. The rest of the game zips along.

 

Thinking back to it, I now fondly remember the underwater bits where you first encounter the freaky submarine lady with the giant hair that tries to murder you. It's an amazing scene.

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Well I didn't see the rebirthing thing coming. Not sure I would recommend this? The imagery is unsettling but the puzzles are not all that interesting. It's very well produced, but to the point of where you end up just pushing right on the analogue stick.

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Just finished the game yesterday evening. Went through finding the missing achievements today.

 

Oh wow what a game. Limbo really struck me years ago as being an amazing experience. Inside does the same with even higher production values. The use of light, sound, animation and ambient background music was really just perfect. The tension in the game was really high all the time and the dystopia world was really well done. I think this might be the best animated game I've ever seen.

 

Year 2016 was excellent for video games when we got super diamonds like Inside and Firewatch. Both Unity games also. That game engine has taken the world by storm.

 

I clocked in a little less than 4 hours and to me that was just perfect length for Inside.

 

Both endings left me thinking for a long time after the game ended.

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I just finished this as well, and did the achievements for the secret ending. 

 

I read some stuff about the ending, watched Campster's videos on it, but I still feel about the story like i did about Limbo's - that it doesn't really matter and its not a strong point of the developer, since in both games - more so in Limbo though - it is really hidden and vague. 

 

But I am still curious about what you all thought of the ending(s). 

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In case you previously skipped it I thought Chris and Jake had good takes on the game in the podcast.

 

Personally I agree the story isn't much, some of the themes are quite on the nose, and then there's just a lot of elements that feel thrown in because they look cool and aren't necessarily thematic with the rest of the game or play well as puzzles. But I do feel like as an artistic snapshot the choices have merit and while I don't find much valuable meaning in the ending it's an absolutely gorgeous piece of video game character animation.

 

Btw if anyone out there is in NYC, Inside is the selected game at next week's meeting of the Game of the Month Club at Babycastles. If you're in town, come on by! https://www.facebook.com/events/239576636515311/

 

 

 

 

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I just started playing Inside yesterday. I'm only about an hour in, and haven't been too frustrated by puzzles thus far. I am enjoying it but have to play in small sessions for it not to freak me out too much. I am very delicate! I will report back when finished and be able to respond to everyone who posted, as well as finally go back and finish the end of year Besties episode from 2016.

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On 5/30/2017 at 1:40 PM, jennegatron said:

I just started playing Inside yesterday. I'm only about an hour in, and haven't been too frustrated by puzzles thus far. I am enjoying it but have to play in small sessions for it not to freak me out too much. I am very delicate! I will report back when finished and be able to respond to everyone who posted, as well as finally go back and finish the end of year Besties episode from 2016.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only person that couldn't play it in big chunks - there is one enemy in the game that really creeps me out hah. 

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Alright - I knocked out a big chunk of this game today, but have to take another break.
So far I

really liked all the submarine & brain controlling puzzles

I am too freaked out by

the water breathing hair creature

to play any more this session

I have broken down and looked up a walk through for when I get stuck on puzzles. It's not the game's fault, I just don't like platforming puzzles very much and get frustrated if I have to do them too many times.

So far there haven't been any puzzles that I've known what the solution was but just had too hard a time executing the platforming, which is something I ran into with Limbo. I will def report back when I finish the rest of it (likely tomorrow) but am into it.

This game is scary in a way that I can deal with (no jump scares, mostly tension and ambiance) but I find it very draining to play for more than an hour or two at a time.

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I played through in two sittings and was very satisfied! As someone else said I'm glad to have another game to show non gamers! This is the perfect game to get my wife to play while I sit there grinning while she freaks out. Watching her play Gone Home with white knuckles was satisfying as hell and I imagine this will be the same!

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I finally went back and finished this yesterday. This continues a trend for me where I keep picking up and playing games whose core gameplay isn't something I actually like, but I want to, and then I end up underwhelmed when I get frustrated by them.

Puzzle platformers like this one and p&c adventures are the two biggest culprits for me.

I actually really liked the way the game ended. I did not go collect everything needed for the secret ending. I did watch it on youtube though.

I will def pick up PlayDead's next game, because I like what they do with ambiance and world building and making neat puzzles. I liked the mind control puzzles the best, and the swimming timing puzzles the least.

I don't like trying to execute jumps perfectly or swimming timings very much. I just struggle to have the dexterity to execute some of the harder timing puzzles. That's not a problem with the game, but rather just a personal limitation.

I would highly recommend it based on the environmental story telling and ambiance and world it builds alone.

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Since this thread is here in the Recent Posts in June 2017 I'll just share some news I've been following on the studio.

 

Dino Patti, co-founder and CEO of Playdead, left the company earlier this year

Creative director on Limbo and Inside, Arnt Jensen, is still at the company and announced that they will continue to work on new games shortly after.

This morning, Dino Patti announced that he landed at "JumpShip", a recent indie startup in Guildford UK, who is working on their passion project: Sommerville.

 

Mostly I wanted to plug Sommerville as it looks amazing, and I think shares a lot of the same inspirations as Inside.
http://somervillegame.tumblr.com/

 

dronekill.gif

 

laser_implemented.gif

 

kitchen_detailing.gif

 

There's a dev-log on Tigsource.

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