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Inside is a puzzle-platformer adventure game developed and published by Playdead in for the Nintendo Switch. The player controls a boy in a dystopic world, solving environmental puzzles and avoiding death. It is the spiritual successor to Playdead's game Limbo, and features similar 2.5D gameplay.
Gameplay[]
Inside is a puzzle platformer. The player character is an unnamed boy who explores a surreal and mostly monochromatic environment presented as a 2.5D platform game. The game is dark, with color used sparingly to highlight both the player and certain parts of the environment. The game is also mostly silent, with the exception of occasional musical cues. The player controls the boy who walks, runs, swims, climbs, and uses objects to overcome obstacles and progress in the game. The boy gains the ability to control bodies to complete certain puzzles. At various points in the game, the player may discover hidden rooms containing glowing orbs. If all the orbs are deactivated during a playthrough, the player unlocks the game's alternate ending.
The boy can die in various ways, such as being shot with a tranquilizer dart, mauled by dogs, ensnared by security machines, blown apart by shockwaves, or drowning. As in the predecessor game Limbo, these deaths are presented realistically and are often graphic. If the character dies, the game continues from the most recent checkpoint.
Plot[]
A boy slides down a rocky incline. While running through a forest, he encounters masked guards with flashlights, as well as vehicles with mounted spotlights, and fierce guard dogs. 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 perform underwater experiments on bodies.
While traversing these areas, the boy uses a mind-control helmet to control lifeless grey bodies. The boy eventually comes across an underwater siren-like creature that attaches a device to him, allowing him to breathe underwater.
Continuing through the office and laboratories, the boy sees scientists observing a large spherical chamber. The boy enters the chamber and discovers a large blob-like creature, the Huddle, made of humanoid limbs connected to four control rods. After disconnecting the rods, the boy is pulled into the Huddle.
The Huddle escapes confinement, crashing through offices, killing some of the scientists in its path. The scientists trap the Huddle in another tank, but the Huddle escapes again and breaks through a wooden wall. It rolls down a forest hill and comes to a stop at a grassy coastline bathed in light.