Inside is a puzzle platformer where you play as a nameless, faceless boy in a red shirt making his way through a sinister world. While the game is textless and without dialogue, it can be surmised that the majority of the population has been zombified and taken over by a corporation who is using them for some unnamed purpose.

You start in the forest, treading through dusky pines and stones. Suddenly, you encounter men who, unless hidden from, will take you down on sight. Just for being an assumably unauthorized living person with free will. They have dogs, and the dogs are much faster than you. You're forced to use a combination of stealth and timing to evade them. Inside's starting phase teaches its player the fragility of the boy in the red shirt, a masterfully handled theme throughout the game. If the boy is spotted or run down, he dies. If the boy remains underwater for more than a few seconds, he dies. If the boy stumbles or mistimes a jump and falls from a height, well... I bet you can guess what happens. This realism lends a feeling of tension to the environmental puzzles you're faced with to progress through the game's post-apocalyptic setting.

Because, when it comes down to it, you're just a boy in a red shirt. You can climb. You can swim. You can run and jump a little bit and interact with objects that aren't too heavy for you to lift. But that's about it.

While Inside's crisp graphics lend the game a 3-D feel, its core loop runs entirely within a 2-D plane. It usually goes something like this:

Boy enters an environment where progression is barred, boy manipulates elements of the environment until a door opens, boy passes through door, loop repeats.

Every so often, Inside's puzzles are broken up by moments of tension defined by a chase, an opportunity to evade your oppressors using stealth, and/or the occasional situation where you're forced to hide in plain sight. While they aren't as traditionally puzzle-y as the game's core loop (i.e., push the box, pull the lever, press the button to make the door open), these moments of tension - due to the implicit disadvantage at which the boy in the red shirt finds himself - are puzzles in themselves. So much so that you're often forced to die a few (or - in my case - many, many) times before you're able to find a way around them.

In fact, one of the most miraculous parts of Inside is the way it rewards trial, error, and eventual creative triumph in its puzzles, stealths, and chases. While some of these encounters are easy, many require interacting with the boy's environment in unique ways and/or going back and forth between object interactions methodically in order to find a solution. The game does a wonderful job of keeping the player on the edge of their seat; while a few of its puzzles took me long periods of repetition to solve, none of them ever left me feeling dejected.

I've heard podcaster Justin McElroy speak of the "generosity" inherent in certain games. How a generous game will make the player trust the developer to reward them for their investment of time, rather than wasting it on frivolity and unnecessary grinding. In my mind, Inside is the embodiment of a generous game in its challenging yet satisfying puzzles.

I played the Switch port of this game on a flight from Virginia to San Diego, and then finished it in a coffee shop the next day. All in all, I would guess it took me - an enthusiastic yet historically unremarkable puzzler - around five hours to complete. After I got over my initial worry about the game being too scary (it never was, even though I have a very low tolerance for horror), I was entranced by Inside's creativity and suspense. The only time the spell was broken was when the boy's relatively realistic speed of movement made running back and forth between the more expansive puzzles in the game feel a bit like a drag. There was only so much slow jogging to and fro that I could stand before I had to take my one break. In this case, the otherwise brilliant way in which the developers rigged and animated the boy's locomotion that lends the game the majority of its thrilling near-brushes with disaster made it feel a bit flat.

My only other problem with the game is that sometimes it was unclear whether or not an object could be interacted with, to the point where I had to go around an environment and press the object interaction button until something clicked. That said, this is a relatively small fault that actually encourages exploration and figuring things out for oneself, which could be argued is a benefit in an environmental puzzle game like this.

Let's do a compliment sandwich. Inside's indirect storytelling and message (both surface-level and metaphorical) are top-notch. From the jump, it is the boy in the red shirt against the world, a world that has empowered a few people to enslave the rest, probably robbing the boy of his parents, his siblings, and his friends, erasing his loved ones to create empty shells compelled to carry out the bidding of the privileged few. One of the most touching yet eerie parts of the puzzle-driven storytelling in the game is when the boy in the red shirt finds the power to control the shells, as they help him access the world.

The way the game handles this control is through specialized helmets that the boy can jump into and animate the shells with his movements. This mechanic progresses in an ingenious way that, at one critical point, left me wondering if I was being chased by a group of shambling shells or aided by them. In the end, the shells are the closest thing the boy has to friends. They're his only helpers, the only beings in the world not actively trying to bring about his end. While the shells are masterfully woven into the game's puzzles, they also carry with them a poignant message about loneliness and what it's like to be a child who doesn't feel supported.

The boy in the red shirt's identity as a young kid also comes into play when deciphering Inside's driving metaphor. He is inhabiting a world full of lifeless, plodding bodies controlled by a few privileged people with free will. He feels the most interactive empathy with the shells but is unable to connect with them due to their lack of free will and life force. In this way, the game is a critique of a capitalist ethos that forces the majority of working adults into a kind of shell-like stupor themselves, working paycheck to paycheck in a rat race that leaves only the wealthiest to choose for themselves. From a child's perspective, it's hard to understand where along their journey some adults lose their sense of joy. Unfortunately, for the boy in the red shirt, this reality is brought further into the foreground with each passing second.

Without spoiling anything, Inside also features one of the most meaningful applications of the game design paradigm of turning player fear into player empowerment. It happens swiftly and without decoration. It kicks off the climax that roils through the end of the game and, finally, brings the developer's interpretation of serenity for the boy in the red shirt and the shells full circle.

This is a game for anyone who wants to do a little thinking and is interested in the emotional outcome of a story as much as the puzzles that populate it. 9/10.

Where it shines:

• Realistic locomotion
• Suspense
• Challenging yet solvable puzzles
• Story, message, and emotional payoff

Where it fades:

• Drags more the larger the puzzles are
• Unclear object interaction (sometimes)