It’s hard to think of many things as intuitive as Inside. It’s one of those games you understand in the first five seconds precisely because it tells you bollock-all. Run, jump, move things, don’t get bludgeoned by baddies. There’s rarely ever any confusion.
The pacing of Inside makes it a hard game to stop playing. The puzzles roll elegantly into each other in a way that’s incredibly morish – there’s some simple part of my brain that just loves being rewarded with progress, like a rat in a patronising maze. My desire to progress is compounded by the endless suffering of my nameless protagonist, too. Some games spend hours setting me up with a compelling reason to keep playing, and don’t always succeed. Inside, however, manages to captivate me with a story that starts as ‘everything is terrible, run right’ then elevates it with some unexpected weirdness. The length helps. Five hours is enough of Inside’s world. I’m not sure I could take more.