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INSIDE - Dark Oppressive Puzzle platformer

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
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Arcane
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Limbo had great ideas and a cool art style, but it was quite boring (the puzzles, while well crafted, weren't really entertaining) and the complete lack of story (fuck, at least gimme some lore informations!) was a huge con.
This one seems pretty much a copy-paste. Funny, since it took SIX years of development :lol:
 
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lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
Child Murder with Precision Jumping and Puzzles 2: The Recoloring. Where are the SJWs when you need them? Oh wait, the kid is white and male. It's perfectly okay then. :troll:

Looks cool. Hopefully it won't be as short as Limbo.
 

tet666

Augur
Joined
Apr 13, 2012
Messages
396
Not only is it a depressing 3h indie at 20€ (i can watch 3 2h+ movies here for that price....) no they also had to include shitty Denuvo (first indie title using it as far as i know), skip.
 

Villagkouras

Arcane
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Greece
There are ways to play Denuvo games for 1$.

So, this game. First of all, I love Limbo, so I am into this kind of games.

Inside is fucking awesome mechanically. I loved every single second of playing it. I haven't seen better animations in any game of this kind, the atmosphere is great. It's a bit easy, for me easier than Limbo, but some riddles and their set pieces are something to be experienced.

Moves are so smooth and fast, it puts all other platformers to shame.

I will definitely play it again.

Too bad its plot and ending are the equivalent of Lars Von Trier movies and everybody will hate it for this, except these illuminated persons that get everything and think that only them are worthy for these kind of things and we are the uncivilized and uneducated plebs. If you play it, prepare to hate the endgame and ending. I didn't mind, I laughed in the endgame actually, but I'm sure you're gonna hate it.

I hope Playdead won't make another 6 years to make another game, they're extremely talented.
 

Cabazone

Educated
Joined
Dec 12, 2007
Messages
66
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France
It may fill you with hope to know that John Walker, one of the most reliable quality gauges of our times, has expressed a strong dislike for the game.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/07/inside-review-pc/#more-380697

"That’s the other really odd part of INSIDE: you get to watch a small boy be brutally murdered an awful lot. In Limbo there was something horrifying about this tiny wisp of shadow being eviscerated on spinning blades, but it was abstract, detached. INSIDE is simply watching a cartoon kid get brutalised over and over. And you’re made to watch – no skipping a death scene to start over here – sit still and watch the man’s hands around his throat as his body goes limp. Cheers."

Seems neat. Too bad it has denuvo...
 
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Neanderthal

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Jul 7, 2015
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Granbretan
It may be useful to know that John Walker, one of the most reliable quality gauge of our times, has expressed a strong dislike for the game.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/07/07/inside-review-pc/#more-380697

"That’s the other really odd part of INSIDE: you get to watch a small boy be brutally murdered an awful lot. In Limbo there was something horrifying about this tiny wisp of shadow being eviscerated on spinning blades, but it was abstract, detached. INSIDE is simply watching a cartoon kid get brutalised over and over. And you’re made to watch – no skipping a death scene to start over here – sit still and watch the man’s hands around his throat as his body goes limp. Cheers."

Seems neat. Too bad it has denuvo...

Fuck me nobody show this Walker arsehole a fuckin horror movie, sensitive little pussy'd die o fright. Wonder if hes sufferin ptsd from playin war as a kid? Someat seriously wrong wi folk who can't tell reality from obviously virtual, heavily stylised stuff.

Game looks alright, probably pick up when price matches duration. Got Tull's Inside from Benefit LP playin in me ead now, fuck.
 

Villagkouras

Arcane
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Greece
The murder scenes last a second or two and most of them aren't that brutal. Unless he is totally incompetent and dies in every occasion presented which is an achievement.
 

Cabazone

Educated
Joined
Dec 12, 2007
Messages
66
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France
Fuck me nobody show this Walker arsehole a fuckin horror movie, sensitive little pussy'd die o fright. Wonder if hes sufferin ptsd from playin war as a kid? Someat seriously wrong wi folk who can't tell reality from obviously virtual, heavily stylised stuff.

To be fair, while he appears to be sightly upset about it, like any middle class boring do-gooder should be, he isn't as hilariously outraged as he can sometimes be.
I have little doubt that the rest of his review is perfectly inept nonetheless.
 
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Villagkouras

Arcane
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Greece
From the RPS review:

Until something breaks beneath your feet, or you drown, or a dog tears you apart, or a man throttles you, or a ghostly underwater girl rips your throat open.

Obviously this guy doesn't have a clue what he played.

You never die from an unexpected, cheap fall. You can drown, but only if you don't pay attention that the kid tries to breathe 5 TIMES underwater before dying. You see dogs and men from a distance before they kill you, you have some seconds to think and act, which is fairly obvious most of the time.

For the bold part:

This creature never tries to rip your throat or even kill you. On the contrary, it tries to save you.

If you don't want to look at the spoilers, I'll just say there is not throat ripping at all, he obviously didn't pay any attention.

There’s a section in a miniature submarine pod in particular that goes on and on and on, having you repeat the same actions so many times, with little variation.

I agree that this is a weak part in the game, at least after the inital change of pace. But this section is 15 minutes long TOPS, not a thing that goes on and on and on.
 

Crooked Bee

(no longer) a wide-wandering bee
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This game feels more like an artsy walking sim than an actual puzzle platformer. The puzzles are just way too easy, to the point of being a non-issue completely.

Nice atmosphere though, and I liked the exploration twists (for lack of a better word).
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Just tore through this in a matter of hours. I know Another World set many precedents when it was released back in the day, but is there a need to copy every single damn one of them in modern-day homages?

The biggest gripe for me is, as has been mentioned, the ending. The story is so loose that there's no point in trying to understand what's going on, it's just better to roll with it and play along. Then the ending comes along and it's just like in Another World - you got this far, now you're just left there wondering what happens next, but the game's ended so you never get to know.

The animation (especially in the ending) is top-notch, so they get props for that. In fact, I'd recommend the final part of the game just for the sheer :prosper: of it all.

But beyond that, this is further proof that Denmark cannot into gaming.
 

Vibalist

Arcane
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Jul 21, 2008
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Denmark
Played it. Liked it. I think most people should be aware by now of what they're getting when they buy a game like this. It's made by the Limbo devs and is another 2D platformer in a wave of artsy 2D platformers. Obviously it's not going to be maddeningly difficult or a revolutionary gaming experience, but that doesn't keep it from being good, simple fun. The art really elevates it to another level. It's really, really good. The controls are also decent. I died once due to my character doing something I didn't want him to do, and controlling the zombies and the

blob towards the end

was sometimes a bit of a hassle, but I've certainly had worse.

And yeah, the ending is a cock tease. I suppose there could be some deep reason as to why it ends when (and how) it does, but I'm not sure I know what it is. Everything just sort of stops. I have heard, however, that there is

a secret ending if you smash a bunch of orbs that are scattered around throughout the game. Funny that. I didn't even know they were there. Maybe I'll go back and look for them, but I actually kind of hate platformers with hidden content, as looking for it kills the pace completely, especially in a fast paced game like this. I remember the Sands of Time trilogy having the same problem.

All in all, I'd give this 7/10. Maybe wait for a sale or something.
 

Unkillable Cat

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The secret ending is as much of a mess as the regular ending.

If you smash all the orbs, a new area becomes accessible on the farm. Down there you'll find one of those mind-control helmets hooked up to a computer, and a big, fat power cable coming from the wall and going into the computer.

Yank the cable from the wall, and the computer system goes dead...along with the boy, who just lies there.

Strong implications abound...but they don't really tell us anything.
 

1451

Seeker
In My Safe Space
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1,368
So what's the story.
You were never free to begin with, all of your journey was to be part of the thing. Seeing how employees towards the end help the thing, it could be part of their plan for you to escape or they were also mind controlled by the thing.

The whole mind control thing and using or freeing of slaves reminded me of the Oddworld games.
 

Robert Jarzebina

Guest
The best use of Unity3d engine yet. Well optimized and polished. Some epic coding.

I loved the atmosphere at beginning and that ending parts with destruction. Some genius ideas, too bad game could be much better, especially in the middle.

8/10 a must play.
 

Wirdschowerdn

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http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...uman_skull_to_create_the_sounds_of_Inside.php

Audio Design Deep Dive: Using a human skull to create the sounds of Inside

This Audio Design Deep Dive is a fresh, game audio-focused spin on Gamasutra's popular Game Design Deep Dive series, which aims to shed light on specific features or mechanics within a video game in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren't really that simple at all.

If you enjoy this sort of focused look at the nuts and bolts of game development, check out earlier installments on design of the action-based RPG battle systems in Undertale, traffic systems of Cities: Skylines, and the plant-growing mechanics of Grow Home.

Also, dig into our ever-growing Deep Dive archive for developer-minded features on everything from Amnesia's sanity meter to the power-ups of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime.

Who: Martin Stig Andersen, sound designer and composer
I’m Martin Stig Andersen and I worked as a composer and sound designer on Inside. I was the audio director as well, and I did have people helping me, but it was pretty hands-on.

My background is in composition. I originally studied composition at conservatory -- writing pieces for orchestra and things like that. While I studied I got interested in electronic music -- not what you think of when you think of popular electronic music, but more experimental like musique concrete.

So I went to London to study electroacoustic composition, which is really about taking everyday sounds, like the sounds of traffic, and then taking that back to the studio and extracting musical material from it. This approach led me into working with sound design as well.

What: Creating the soundscape of Playdead’s Inside with the help of a human skull
Early on, as we were working on Inside, I had the idea of working with a human skull because I think it's very interesting how the sound of your own voice sounds very different in your own head.

People are often shocked when they hear themselves recorded, because things sound totally different inside your head. Things sound much softer in there, more full, in a way. This is because a large part of what you hear is your voice resonating inside your body, in your jawbone for example. Try blocking your ears while you speak or sing; that’s the sound I’m talking about.

So I had the basic idea of trying to recreate sounds as they would sound if they were happening inside your head. That was the curious thought that led me to acquire a human skull and experiment with it.

In the end, the sounds I played through the skull were actually synthesized sounds, which I usually don't do a lot -- most of the work I do is done by going and recording things with a microphone. But for Inside, I think because of the game's aesthetics, I kind of felt it should be associated with '80s B-movie soundtracks -- cheap yet cool soundtracks.

But at the same time I didn't really want to hear synth music in the game. I tried to do it, but it felt too much like a statement -- like we wanted express something by subscribing to a specific genre. I don't think that's appropriate for a game like Inside, a small game that's all about creating its own unique world.

IMG_0050.jpg


But when I played them through a skull, the sounds acquired another quality. I did some post-processing as well, of course, but even without it you can hear this kind of timbre, which inspire a very nuanced association with a synth soundtrack. Many of the sounds that I processed was created by my co-composer on Inside, SØS Gunver Ryberg. During the development we acquired an intuition for what kind of soundscapes resonated well within the skull.

Sample of a track from Inside (created by co-composer SØS Gynver Ryberg) prior to being skulled



The end result, after the post-processing, is generally a bit creepy and cold. The sound has almost a chill about it. Eventually all the teeth fell out of the skull because of the vibrations, but while they were still there they created this small vibrating sound that I think was unsettling but also strangely familiar to people. Because we all know it, in a way.

The same track, after being run through the skull and processed



Of course, it was a bit tricky to work with the skull. I had to try many different contact microphones before I found one that worked well. But really the biggest challenge was that, when you transform sounds through an object like this, they come out initially sounding quite bad. So I had to do some amount of post-processing afterwards in order to make the sounds listenable.

IMG_0048.jpg


But I stuck with it because the skull works like a unique filter. It gives our sounds an iconic signature, boosting certain frequencies and dipping others. I really liked the way frequencies shifted when we played sound through the skull, even though they needed some post-processing afterwards. I also think that taking such a detour is often necessary in order to obtain something unique, and ruining sounds only to restore them again are steps I often take to create something that sounds a little different.

Why?
Every time I start on a new project I really want to find some kind of distinctive, original sound. Not like a musical style, but more like a sound quality that you can associate with that project. I think it helps to create a sort of holistic, whole experience.

Result
I’m very happy with the results of working with a human skull, even though I don't expect to use this again. Usually with specific elements like this, I prefer to move on to the next thing; the use of the skull helped define the sonic quality of Inside, and now I think it will remain on the shelf of my studio for the foreseeable future.

This is a good example of how I have learned to work with sound: to take something and not have too many expectations about what I will achieve with it. At the same time, I try to stay open to see what a given object can bring me, what the good and bad things are about it. It gives me something as well -- the right object can change my direction on a project. So I guess what I learn from working with objects like this skull is to remain open to experimenting, and to listening to what a given object can do to sound.

In the future I'd like to work with the tools of electronic surveillance, like highly-directed microphones and things like that. I think that could be very fun to work with.



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"Fabulous"
 

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