- Hashem Habibian
- 2022-02-20
- 10:38 pm
Publisher: ChuckleFish
Developer: Hidden Layer Games
Release: Aug 21, 2020
Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch
Pain is indeed a part of our lives as human beings, but this does not mean that life is the same concept of pain; Even in the face of the darkest difficulties, one can still have a good life. This dialogue is part of hundreds of valuable dialogues from a standalone pixel art game; A unique four-hour experience called Inmost.
Although the creator of this title, Alexey Testov, has admitted that he was inspired by games such as Inside and Limbo to make this work, in terms of narration, it is very close to the acclaimed title To the Moon. You will play with three different characters in this game; A girl, a middle-aged man, and finally, a knight. The connection between these three characters is the biggest puzzle that you will realize at the end of the tortuous adventure of Inmost. The music of this title bears a large part of the weight of the narrative. In many parts of the game, you are and a perfect pixel art frame that is inspired by the game’s great music.
At the beginning of the story, you will find yourself in the form of a little girl in a room. In the following, you will strangely find out that this character is afraid of his father and his mother does not pay attention to her. In the second part, you see a middle-aged man trying to escape from the clutches of the black creatures that surround him at the bottom of a ruined castle, and finally, in the third part, you will see a knight holding a sword trying to ruin obstacles in the way. This cycle repeats over and over again until the end, and the further you go in the story of these three people, the more you will notice the connection between them.
In terms of environmental storytelling, paper-like objects guide the story, and besides them, there is a storyteller NPC who, in order to better understand his stories, has to get the white dots that we call “pain”. The storyteller in Inmost tells strange stories in exchange for receiving them, and you will eventually find out how they relate to the main storyline. The extraordinary point of the story is that everything from the graphics to the music or the dialogues of this title is expressed metaphorically. So, to understand this work, after finishing it once, you have to experience it again, and since this is a re-attempt to discover the truth that lies at the heart of this story, it is not only dull but also more enthusiastic.
Each character has their own gameplay; The knight, for example, has the ability to fight, but the other two characters do not. Generally, Inmost is a platformer puzzle with a touch of fear. The design of the puzzles in the game is not so simple as to take away the pleasure of solving the puzzle from the gamer, nor is it so hard that it bores the gamer. Having timely shortcuts and constant change from one character to another also prevents the game from getting boring.
The sound and graphics of Inmost are the two main pillars in the narrative of this title. Pixel art of the game is something more than arranging several pixels next to each other. Some of the game’s animations are so detailed that you keep wondering how such an image is displayed in pixel art; For example, in a scene of a game where a knight is thrown into a corner and rolls on the ground, the visual details of this event are very impressive, and this is why the image, along with the music of the game, tells a story. In inducing the atmosphere of fear in the game, the game’s pixel art graphics can be considered one of the reasons for creating this atmosphere. The horror creatures of the Inmost game world are designed with special details, both in how they move and in terms of their appearance, and even the game environment is no exception to this rule. All you have to do is run in a damp corridor full of spider webs to feel the weight of your character while running, and that feeling is simply instilled in you by pixel art.
The sound of the game in some parts seems to be more than an independent effect; For example, in a scene where a girl is hiding inside a piano, you will encounter piano music in the background that depicts a calm environment for you, but as soon as you step out of the piano and fall on the piano keys, the sound effect is blown will make you stunned. At the beginning of the game, it is mentioned to use the headset to better understand the world of Inmost. You will understand this feeling more when you are exploring the environment in the rain. The sound of raindrops is such that it inspires you to be well-humid. During the three times I experienced this title on the switch, I did not see any drop of frame or lag, and the only thing that was sometimes annoying was the slow animation of the jumps in the platforming section. When playing with a middle-aged man, one of the moves at your disposal is to jump from one platform to another, and this slowness of animation when jumping sometimes kills the main character. Of course, proper checkpoints prevented this objection from becoming too obvious.
This title may seem like a $ 15 four-hour title, but in fact, Inmost is a unique storytelling experience that, in order to understand moment by moment, you have to experience it many times with great enthusiasm to discover the mystery of its story.
Inmost Review
Inmost may seem like an ordinary 15 dollars indie game that you can kill in a few hours, but it is actually a unique tale full of secrets that will make you play it over and over again to fully discover its creepy world.