Inside | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Playdead |
Publisher(s) | Playdead |
Director(s) | Arnt Jensen |
Producer(s) | Mads Wibroe |
Designer(s) | Jeppe Carlsen |
Programmer(s) | Kristian Kjems |
Composer(s) |
|
Engine | Unity |
Platform(s) | |
Release | June 29, 2016
|
Genre(s) | Puzzle-platform |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Inside is a 2016 puzzle-platform game developed and published by Playdead. The game was released for the Xbox One in June 2016, Windows in July, and PlayStation 4 in August, followed by releases for iOS in December 2017, Nintendo Switch in June 2018, and macOS in June 2020. The player controls a boy in a dystopic world, solving environmental puzzles and avoiding death. It is the successor to Playdead's 2010 Limbo , with similar 2.5D gameplay.
Playdead began work on Inside shortly after the release of Limbo, using Limbo's custom game engine. The team switched to Unity to simplify development, adding their own rendering routines, later released as open source, to create a signature look. The game was partially funded by a grant from the Danish Film Institute. Inside premiered at Microsoft's E3 2014 conference, with a planned release in 2015, but was delayed to 2016.
Inside was released to critical acclaim. Critics noted it as an improvement over Limbo, praising its art direction, atmosphere and gameplay. The game was nominated for numerous accolades, including game of the year, and won several independent awards for technical achievement. As with Limbo, Inside is included on multiple lists of the greatest video games of all time as compiled by game journalists.
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 mostly silent, with the exception of occasional musical cues, the boy's vocals, dogs barking, equipment and sound effects. The player controls the boy who walks, runs, swims, climbs, and uses objects to overcome obstacles and progress in the game. [2] The boy gains the ability to control bodies to complete certain puzzles, a mechanic that IGN 's Marty Sliva compared to a similar mechanic in The Swapper . [3] 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. [4]
The boy can die in a multitude of ways, including drowning, being shot with a gun or tranquilizer dart, mauled by dogs, ensnared by security machines, being blown apart by shockwaves, and others. As in the predecessor game Limbo, these deaths are presented realistically and are often graphic, but to a larger degree, earning the ESRB's Mature rating as opposed to Limbo's Teen rating. If the character dies, the game continues from the most recent checkpoint. [3]
Later in the game, the player controls a monster called the Huddle, who possesses great strength and cannot die in any way. However, the player will still need to rely on strategy to get through certain areas.
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. [5]
While traversing these areas, the boy uses a mind-control helmet to control some of the zombies he encounters. The boy 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 the Huddle, [6] [7] a monstrous mass of conjoined human bodies. After disconnecting the Huddle's restraints, the boy is pulled into it, seemingly becoming one with the Huddle. [5]
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.
If the player deactivated the hidden light orbs in the various bunkers, the boy returns to one of the bunkers and gains access to a new area. He reaches an area that includes a bank of computers and one of the mind-control helmets, powered by a nearby socket. The boy pulls the plug from the socket, then suddenly takes the same stance as the zombies. [8]
Journalists and players have offered several different theories about the game's main ending (the freeing of the Huddle) and the alternative ending.
One theory speculates that the boy is controlled by the Huddle throughout most of the game, leading him to help free the Huddle from containment. [9] As described by Jeffrey Matulef of Eurogamer , the game impresses that the Huddle has a magnetic-like draw that leads the boy to endanger himself and unquestioningly enter the tank where the Huddle is kept so as to free it. [8] Players speculated on the theory that taking the alternate ending is working contrary to the Huddle's goal, and the act of unplugging the computers is to release the Huddle's control on the boy. There are some who believe that in the world of Inside, humanity has almost been destroyed because of some ultimate biological catastrophe and that the scientists are making experiments with the Huddle so it can control minds very far away to free itself. This has been thought because there are large quantities of buildings under water. When the Huddle escapes, there is a 3D diorama that represents the coasts at which the Huddle arrives after escaping the tank of water. [10] A similar theory has the boy being controlled by one or more of the scientists, evidenced by how some of the scientists appear to aid the Huddle in escaping the facility. In this theory, the scientists put the boy through many dangers to gain strength and intelligence, so that these qualities can be absorbed by the Huddle when the boy frees it, improving the creature in a desirable manner for these scientists. [8]
A more metafictional interpretation of the game from its alternate ending [10] is based on the notion of player agency. Matulef summarizes this theory as "the boy is being controlled by a renegade force represented by the player". [8] The act of pulling the plug in the final area is similar to the concept of The Matrix , as described by PC Gamer 's Tim Clark. [11] Matulef explains that the location of the alternate ending is only known to the player with knowledge of the main ending and not to the Huddle or the scientists. With knowledge of the game's true ending, achieving the alternate ending is to reach a conclusion to the game that "ostensibly puts an end to the boy, the blob, and any inhumane experiments being conducted". [8]
Playdead released the monochromatic Limbo in July 2010, [12] which was critically praised and sold over one million units. [13] Within a few months of its release, Playdead began development on their second game under the working title "Project 2". [14] [15] [16] [13] As a spiritual successor to Limbo, [17] [18] [19] Inside reclaimed assets from Limbo's development. [13] Playdead said that the two games were similar, though Inside is more "crazy", "weird", and 3D. [15] The Danish Film Institute provided one million dollars in funding towards the game. [20]
While Playdead had built a custom game engine for Limbo, they chose Unity to reduce their workload. [13] [21] The developers created a temporal anti-aliasing filter for the engine, entitled "temporal reprojection", to create a signature look for Inside. In March 2016, Playdead released the source code under an open source license. [22]
The Huddle, the amalgam of body parts that the player controls at the end of the game, had been an idea for the game since 2010, when animator Andreas Normand Grøntved had been brought aboard Playdead to do preliminary animations for it based on a drawing by artist Morten Bramsen. [23] Bramsen's drawing of the Huddle served to guide much of the visual nature and art style for the rest of the game. [23] To animate it, Grøntved took inspiration from the motion of Nago the demon form of the boar god from Princess Mononoke , the squishiness of the main character of the game Gish , and human behavior during crowd surfing. [23] Grøntved developed initial animations using what he called the Huddle Potato that simplified the geometries to demonstrate how the being would move and interact with the environment. [23] Whereas most of the other game animations were based on a combination of pre-set skeletal movements along with the physics engine, the Huddle had to be animated predominantly by a custom physics model developed by Thomas Krog, and implemented by Lasse Jon Fulgsang Pedersen, Søren Trautner Madsen, and Mikkel Bøgeskov Svendsen. This model uses a 26-body simulation of the core of the Huddle, driven by a network of impulses based on the direction of the player and the local environment, which allowed the Huddle to reconfigure itself as it needed in certain situations, such as fitting into tight spaces. [23] They then added six arms and six legs with some pre-set animations that would also help to drive the impulse in the main body simulation. [23] The skin of the huddle was a mix of art styles borrowed from the sculptures of John Isaacs, and the art of Jenny Saville and Rembrandt. [23] The vocals and bodysounds were performed by the renowned Danish-Austrian performance group SIGNA. [24]
Martin Stig Andersen, with SØS Gunver Ryberg, composed and designed Inside's soundtrack, returning from Limbo. Andersen was inspired by 1980s B horror films, often using synthesizers, but did not want to compose an actual soundtrack. Instead, he created the music by routing sound through a human skull and recording the result, a "bone-conducting sound" that created a "sombre, chill quality" that often complements Inside's visuals. [25]
Inside has a close integration of the game-play and audio, with some puzzles set directly to visual-aural cues. This required Andersen to work more closely with the game-play developers than he had in Limbo. This enabled additional visual elements tied to the audio; Andersen noted that the boy's chest movements related to breathing are tied to the sound effects he created for his breathing, which themselves are influenced by where the character is in the game, with differences being calm and panicked emotions depending on location. [25] Andersen collaborated with the design team on the game's general structure and pacing to provide scenes where the music builds up atmospheric tension. [25]
Microsoft announced Inside during its E3 2014 press conference. [12] Prior to this, the game had been planned for release on non-Microsoft platforms, including the PlayStation 3 and OS X. [13] Playdead had purposely waited four years so as to give little time between the announce event and the launch. [15] IGN 's Ryan McCaffrey wrote that the announcement was a sign of Microsoft's commitment to indie game development [26] and said it was his biggest surprise of the year. [27] The developer later delayed the game from its expected early 2015 release for further refinement of the game, but provided no expected launch window. [14] [28] A playable demo was prepared for an August 2015 Microsoft event before PAX Prime. [29] With the delay, Playdead only planned for initial release on Windows and Xbox One, [12] but had expressed interest in other consoles in the future. [15]
Playdead announced Inside's release dates during E3 2016, and as a limited-time promotion, let players download Limbo for free in advance of the title's release. Inside was released for Xbox One on 29 June 2016, and for Windows via Steam on 7 July. [30] Ports for other platforms followed: the PlayStation 4 version was released on 23 August, [31] [32] the iOS version on December 15, 2017, [33] [34] and the Nintendo Switch version on June 28, 2018 alongside the release of Limbo. [35] 505 Games published Inside and Limbo as a dual-game retail package for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which was released in September 2017. [36]
Playdead partnered with iam8bit and Abyss Creations (the manufacturers of RealDoll) to create a special release edition of the game for the PlayStation 4 which includes a silicone recreation of the Huddle, along with additional art. Though revealed and sold in 2018, the contents of the special edition were not fully revealed until December 2019. [37]
Aggregator | Score |
---|---|
Metacritic | XONE: 93/100 [38] PC: 87/100 [39] PS4: 91/100 [40] NS: 91/100 [41] |
Publication | Score |
---|---|
Destructoid | 9.5/10 [42] |
Edge | 9/10 [43] |
Electronic Gaming Monthly | 9.5/10 [44] |
Game Informer | 9.75/10 [45] |
GameRevolution | [46] |
GameSpot | 8/10 [47] |
GamesRadar+ | [48] |
Giant Bomb | [49] |
IGN | 10/10 [50] |
PC Gamer (US) | 76/100 [51] |
Polygon | 9.5/10 [52] |
TouchArcade | [53] |
VideoGamer.com | 10/10 [54] |
Inside received universal acclaim, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. [38] [40] [41] Critics favorably compared the title as a worthy successor to Limbo. [55] [56] [57] [58] The game was one of Polygon and IGN's most anticipated 2016 releases. [59] [60] From previewing the game at E3 2016, IGN's Marty Sliva considered the title to be "Super Limbo", polishing and improving from Playdead's first game into the new title in the same manner that Nintendo had done for its previous games in bringing them to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. [3] Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku called the game an "evolution" on what Playdead has succeeded to do with Limbo. [61] Jaz Rignall of USgamer previewed Inside and wrote that it was one of the best puzzle platformers he has played, even better than its predecessor. [62]
Much like for Limbo, several publications have included Inside on their lists of the greatest video games of all time. [63] [64] [65] [66] [67] [68] [69] In 2022, PC Gamer listed Inside as one of the best PC games, with editor Rich Stanton stating the game was "one of the very best experiences I've had in gaming", and contributing writers stating the game was "the perfect narrative sidescroller", and "had one of the best endings of any game". [70]
The game won the awards for "Golden Cube" and "Best Desktop/Console Game" at the Unity Awards 2016, and it also won the award for "Best-Looking Game" at the Giant Bomb 2016 Game of the Year Awards, whereas its other nomination was for "Best Moment or Sequence". [71] [72] At The Edge Awards 2016, the game came in second place each for "Best Visual Design", "Best Storytelling" and "Studio of the Year", and it came in third place for "Game of the Year", while it won the award for "Best Audio Design". [73]
Year | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2016 | Game Critics Awards 2016 | Best Independent Game | Won | [74] |
Golden Joystick Awards 2016 | Best Original Game | Nominated | [75] [76] | |
Best Visual Design | Nominated | |||
Best Audio | Nominated | |||
Best Indie Game | Nominated | |||
Best Gaming Moment (The Ending) | Nominated | |||
Game of the Year | Nominated | |||
Xbox Game of the Year | Nominated | |||
The Game Awards 2016 | Game of the Year | Nominated | [77] [78] | |
Best Narrative | Nominated | |||
Best Art Direction | Won | |||
Best Music/Sound Design | Nominated | |||
Best Independent Game | Won | |||
2017 | 20th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards | Game of the Year | Nominated | [79] |
Adventure Game of the Year | Nominated | |||
D.I.C.E. Sprite Award | Won | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Animation | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction | Won | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Game Design | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction | Won | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design | Nominated | |||
Outstanding Achievement in Story | Nominated | |||
National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers | Camera Direction in a Game Engine | Won | [80] | |
Independent Games Festival 2016 | Seumas McNally Grand Prize | Nominated | [81] [82] | |
Excellence in Audio | Nominated | |||
Excellence in Visual Art | Nominated | |||
Game Developers Choice Awards 2016 | Game of the Year | Nominated | [83] [82] | |
Best Audio | Won | |||
Best Design | Nominated | |||
Best Narrative | Nominated | |||
Best Visual Art | Won | |||
Innovation Award | Nominated | |||
2017 SXSW Gaming Awards | Excellence in Design | Nominated | [84] [85] | |
Excellence in Art | Nominated | |||
Excellence in Animation | Nominated | |||
Excellence in SFX | Nominated | |||
13th British Academy Games Awards | Best Game | Nominated | [86] [87] | |
Artistic Achievement | Won | |||
Audio Achievement | Nominated | |||
Game Design | Won | |||
Music | Nominated | |||
Narrative | Won | |||
Original Property | Won | |||
2018 | 2018 Webby Awards | Action | Won | [88] |
Best Game Design | Nominated | |||
Best Music/Sound Design | Nominated | |||
Best User Experience (People's Voice) | Won | |||
Best Visual Design | Won | |||
Best Writing | Nominated | |||
Puzzle | Nominated |
Conker is a series of platform video games created and produced by Rare. It chronicles the events of Conker the Squirrel, an anthropomorphic red squirrel that made his debut as a playable character in Diddy Kong Racing.
Kingdom Hearts III is a 2019 action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, and Nintendo Switch. It is the twelfth installment in the Kingdom Hearts series, and serves as a conclusion of the "Dark Seeker Saga" story arc that began with the original game. Set after the events of Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, returning protagonist Sora is joined by Donald Duck, Goofy, King Mickey, and Riku in their search for seven guardians of light as they attempt to thwart Xehanort's plan to bring about a second Keyblade War. Their journey has them cross paths with characters and visit worlds based on different Disney and Pixar intellectual properties.
4A Games Limited is a Ukrainian-Maltese video game developer based in Sliema, Malta. The company was founded in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2006 by three developers who departed from GSC Game World. In 2014, 4A Games moved its headquarters to Sliema, wherein the Kyiv office was retained as a sub-studio. The company is best known for developing the Metro video game series.
Limbo is a puzzle-platform video game with horror elements developed by independent studio Playdead and originally published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. The game was released in July 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade, and it has since been ported by Playdead to several other systems, including the PlayStation 3, Linux and Microsoft Windows. Limbo is a 2D side-scroller, incorporating a physics system that governs environmental objects and the player character. The player guides an unnamed boy through dangerous environments and traps as he searches for his sister. The developer built the game's puzzles expecting the player to fail before finding the correct solution. Playdead called the style of play "trial and death", and used gruesome imagery for the boy's deaths to steer the player from unworkable solutions.
World of Tanks (WoT) is an armoured warfare-themed multiplayer online game developed by Wargaming, featuring 20th century (1910s–1970s) era combat vehicles. It is built upon a freemium business model where the game is free-to-play, but participants also have the option of paying a fee for use of "premium" features. The focus is on player vs. player gameplay with each player controlling an armored vehicle, from the time of Pre-World War 2 to the Cold War-era.
Playdead ApS is a Danish independent video game developer based in Copenhagen. Game designers Arnt Jensen and Dino Patti created the company in 2006 to develop Limbo, which was released in 2010 to critical acclaim. After a year of Xbox 360 exclusivity, Playdead released ports of the game to PlayStation 3, Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS and Android.
Gears of War 4 is a 2016 third-person shooter video game developed by The Coalition and published by Microsoft Studios for Windows and Xbox One. It is the fourth main installment in the Gears of War series, and the first mainline entry not to be developed by Epic Games. The game was released worldwide on October 11, 2016. The sequel, Gears 5, was released on September 10, 2019.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing game developed by the Polish studio CD Projekt Red, and published by CD Projekt, and based on Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk tabletop game series. The plot is set in the fictional metropolis of Night City, California, within the dystopian Cyberpunk universe. The player assumes the role of V, a mercenary who accidentally gets imbued with a cybernetic "bio-chip" containing an engram of legendary rockstar and terrorist Johnny Silverhand. As Johnny's behaviour and memories begin overwriting V's own, the two must work together to separate from each other and save V's life.
2017 saw the release of numerous video games as well as other developments in the video game industry. The Nintendo Switch console was released in 2017, which sold more than 14 million units by the end of the year, exceeding the under-performing Wii U lifetime sales. This has helped to revitalize Nintendo, with the "retro" Super NES Classic Edition console, the refreshed New Nintendo 2DS XL handheld and a strategy for mobile gaming. Microsoft also released the higher-powered Xbox One X targeted for 4K resolutions and virtual reality support.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a 2015 action role-playing game developed and published by the Polish studio CD Projekt. It is the sequel to the 2011 game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and the third game in The Witcher video game series, played in an open world with a third-person perspective. The games follow the Witcher series of fantasy novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski.
140 is a platform game developed and published by Carlsen Games. It was directed by Jeppe Carlsen, who previously worked on Playdead's Limbo. The game is described as a "minimalistic platformer", using electronic music to create synesthesia as the player makes their way through four different levels, each with its own soundtrack. Its gameplay has been compared to other similar games which involve music synchronization like Sound Shapes and the Bit.Trip series, though with difficult platforming elements comparable to games in the Mega Man series. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, Mac, and Linux in October 2013, on Xbox One in August 2016, on PlayStation 4 and Wii U in September 2016, and Nintendo Switch in January 2020. A release on PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS was planned, but later cancelled.
Below is an action-adventure game developed by Capybara Games. The game was announced during Microsoft's E3 2013 press event, and was indefinitely delayed in 2016. It initially released on Microsoft Windows and Xbox One on December 14, 2018, with a PS4 port released in 2020. The game received mixed reviews upon release.
Fallout 4 is a 2015 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fourth main game in the Fallout series and was released worldwide on November 10, 2015, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The game is set within an open world post-apocalyptic environment that encompasses the city of Boston and the surrounding Massachusetts region known as "The Commonwealth".
Life Is Strange is an episodic adventure game developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Square Enix. The first installment of the Life Is Strange series, the game was released in five episodes periodically throughout 2015 for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. It was ported to OS X and Linux in 2016, and iOS and Android in 2017 and 2018.
Firewatch is an adventure game developed by Campo Santo and published by the developer in partnership with Panic. The game was released in February 2016 for Linux, OS X, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in September 2016, and for Nintendo Switch in December 2018. The story follows a fire lookout named Henry who works in Shoshone National Forest. Henry interacts with his supervisor Delilah using a walkie-talkie, with the player choosing from dialog options to communicate. His exchanges with Delilah inform the process by which their relationship is developed. Over the course of the summer, Henry and Delilah appear to be menaced by unseen forces and have to unravel a years-old mystery.
Dark Souls is a dark fantasy action role-playing game series developed by FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. Created by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the series began with the release of Dark Souls (2011) and has seen two sequels, Dark Souls II (2014) and Dark Souls III (2016). It has received critical acclaim, with its high level of difficulty being among its most discussed aspects, while the first Dark Souls is often cited as one of the greatest games of all time. The series had shipped over 35 million copies outside of Japan as of 2023. Other FromSoftware games, including Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring, share several related concepts and led to the creation of the Soulslike subgenre.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 was the 22nd E3, during which several hardware manufacturers and software developers and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products to the attendees, primarily retailers and members of the video game press. The event, organized by the Entertainment Software Association, took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 14–16, 2016. Approximately 50,300 people attended the event, slightly down from the previous year's. With video game consoles currently a couple years into their 8th generation, the focus of E3 2016 was primarily on new software titles, with new hardware revisions and auxiliary equipment to support the growing market sectors of 4K resolution displays and virtual reality headsets.
The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 was the 23rd E3, during which hardware manufacturers and software developers and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products to the attendees, primarily retailers and members of the video game press. The event, organized by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from June 13–15, 2017. It was the first E3 to allow public access to the event, and as a result, the total attendance was about 68,400 which included 15,000 in public passes.
Somerville is an adventure video game and the debut title by the independent studio Jumpship. The studio's co-founder, Dino Patti, previously co-founded Playdead and worked on Limbo and Inside as executive producer on both games. The game was released on Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on November 15, 2022. It was released for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on August 31, 2023. It received mixed reviews upon release.
The Harry Potter video games are a series of video games based on the Harry Potter novel and film series originally created by English author J. K. Rowling. Many of the Harry Potter-inspired video games are tie-ins to the film adaptations of the same name. There are multiple distinct versions for individual games.
"Den største samlede støtte kommer dog fra Det Danske Filminstitut, der i år har støttet syv større spil heriblandt den dystre sjælelige efterfølger med arbejdstitlen 'Project 2' til det prisbelønnede 'LIMBO' instrueret af Arnt Jensen fra udvikleren PLAYDEAD." ("The largest total support comes from the Danish Film Institute, which this year has supported seven major games including the bleak spiritual sequel with the working title 'Project 2' to the award winning 'LIMBO' directed by Arnt Jensen Developer PLAY DEAD.")