INSIDE was one of the first games I ever reviewed. I played the puzzle platformer on a plane ride from Washington, DC to San Diego. I was on my way to compete in the USA Ultimate National Championship, and appreciated the way the game took my mind off the pressure I was feeling.

I've put a lot of blood and sweat into ultimate frisbee over my eleven years with the sport. It's been my main extracurricular activity. Glorious. Soul-eating. It has run the gamut in terms of how it makes me feel. What's weird about playing semi-pro and elite club ultimate is that you're expected to commit your entire self to your team(s) while also - somehow - living a normal adult life. This often looks like working a full day at your nine-to-five, then heading to a three hour practice before waking up and doing it again the next day.

It looks like fitting in training sessions during all-hands meetings at a job you don't care much about. It looks like putting yourself on the line for the betterment of a group of people that becomes your family.

As you can probably infer, this kind of schedule causes burnout. And I felt burnt out on that plane ride. My coach had crunched the numbers and shared with the team that we'd played and practiced together 100 days out of the 365 in the year 2023. My legs ached and my schedule had become a blur. Work, practice, rest, repeat. On top of this feeling sat a mounting pressure.

My team had been the best in the world last season. We'd won every regular season tournament and had a perfect record at nationals until we got crushed in the finals by a team we'd beaten handily earlier in the tournament. It damaged me. I learned how to play ultimate in DC. I wanted to help put my team on the map. We'd never won a championship, and our time to do so with the current group was running out.

Spoilers ahead. If you haven't played INSIDE, go ahead and do so before reading the rest of this piece. It's a very short and meaningful game. You won't be sorry.

At the end of INSIDE, you go from controlling a lonely boy navigating a post-environmental world where corporations have turned the majority of the human population into mind-controlled shells to controlling a grotesque mass of bodies that powers its way through the laboratory in which it was created.

You ravage the facility, eventually bursting your way into the office of its CEO and tackling him out of a window and onto a warehouse floor fifty feet below. The empowerment that I felt in these moments spoke to me. The amalgamation of human bodies I controlled - a being that would normally be seen as monstrous - became a beautiful reminder of what liberation looked like after torture.

That liberation is made fully manifest when you plummet down a hillside and come to rest by the edge of a body of water. You've escaped from the doomed cityscape. Finally, there are trees. Moss and grass. Life outside. Uncontrolled.

The sun - INSIDE's first and only ray of sun - shines down, bathing your once-writhing mass of flesh and limbs in soft light. You're left to look at the screen for a while. No credits. No movement. You realize that your monster is losing its edges. It de-animates. You are now a rock. A rock in the sun by the water. Serene.

I had some of the lowest moments of my ultimate career that weekend. I felt more pressure than I'd ever known. As someone prone to imposter syndrome, my insecurities came very close to shutting me down completely. I turfed the disc. I threw turnovers. I had miscommunications with teammates I'd been playing with for years.

But my team made it back to the semi-finals by the skin of our teeth. I played well that game, but toward the end the score got tight when I threw a backfield pass to my teammate who had juked and gone downfield right as I released the disc. The other team put in a break. It was a one-point game.

On the walk back to the line, I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. I Imagined that I was a monster. Then a rock. A rock in the sun, warming myself up. Finally unsuffering. Serene.

We closed out that game. I caught the winning goal. In the finals the next day, I looked to INSIDE to find my peace once more. I played well. DC took home its first championship.

When I embarked on my video game journey, I never imagined it would provide touchstones to help me live a healthier, more courageous life. I still get stressed. A lot of days I don't know who I am or what I want to do. But I am serene, and INSIDE helps cement this feeling.

A rock in the sun is warm. It's mossy, having been there for a while, and its rest is resolute. Within it there is hope for a lifetime far less tortured than the one it used to know.