“Inside | Out” by Yoan Allibert.
“[This game is] a recursive first-person adventure set under a mysterious dome. The world around you is contained within itself[.] […] Progress and transform the environment around you, bring items into the smaller world to scale them up and use their larger form to advance in the adventure.”
With its recursive level design, the video game “Inside | Out” creates a short, but also enjoyable puzzle experience. Here we can interact with our environment in two ways: On the one hand, we can explore it directly from the first-person perspective, but on the other hand, we can change it by manipulating a miniature model of the world with the help of everyday objects. The light of a desk lamp thus suddenly becomes all-illuminating sunshine, while a breeze from a fan, otherwise perceived as cool, mutates into a frosty winter storm. Every change on the small scale thus also affects the big picture and vice versa.
While I personally find the puzzles too easy to solve, as “Inside | Out” does not skimp on clues – light beams visualize where to go next, and moreover, mostly very clear text instructions appear on a board next to our miniature world – I still find the idea wonderful and quite imaginative. With an almost childlike logic, powerful transformations are evoked here and new perspectives are opened up, which always brought a smile to my lips during the ten to fifteen minutes of play. So if you feel like a touch of magic, you should give this game a chance. [PLAY]
