However, my largest issue ended up being with the plot. I’m pretty sure the last fifteen minutes played out without my interacting at all. While the game has no issues with asking you to run a character from one end of a corridor to another, to trigger the next narrative burst, it latterly decides it doesn’t need you at all for this purpose, inching characters about on its own. I ended up like a kid at a service station, waggling the joysticks unaware of the “INSERT COIN” flashing on the screen, as I realised I didn’t have any control at all. Which leads to the another big issue: as you reach the latter stages of the game, it increasingly decides it’s going to play it for you. In another barriers that were supposed to disappear did not, again leaving me running back and forth wondering what I was missing, and again having to reload (although infuriatingly this time, to the level before, that happened to be excruciatingly slow). There’s one level where dragging a plank in the “wrong” direction (you’ve no way of knowing what’s right at the time) creates a fail state it doesn’t acknowledge, and requires reloading the whole level. The most surprising is bugs, given the number of testers the credits scrawled in front of me. Backgrounds are often breathtaking, and its sparing use of light – especially moonlight – had me gasp. Its Hollow Knight on a Game Boy Color aesthetic works wonderfully, and the animations are exquisite. We are spoilt for pretty pixel games these days, so it’s saying something to note how Inmost stands out from the crowd. You gain tools that allow access to newer areas, but in the tightest, most confined space I’ve seen a Metroid-me-do take place.Įlsewhere, the exploration sections are too easily spoiled but take place all in one house, while the combat-focused levels are more sprawling, spread out, asking you to whack your way through a collection of shadowy-goop enemies.Īnd oh my, it’s all so extraordinarily beautiful. Laconically paced, it’s about expanding your access to a surprisingly small amount of real estate given just how long you’ll spend exploring it. The largest section is a sort of Hollow-Knight-on-ketamine, although while by no means enemy-free, always combat-free. I mean, quite astonishingly well in places. You’re left in no doubt that it’s about death, grief, sadness, loss, all those upbeat treats, but quite how and who and why remains enigmatic until the credits scroll and you search for online discussions to see what others think.Īnd as that game, it’s exceptionally well put together. The latter forms the bulk of things, but it jumps about between the three with flittery abandon, designed to increasingly allow you to put together its story like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing. There’s the combat one, the exploring one, and the puzzling one. As a game, what you’ve got here are three concurrent pixel-platforming games, each intertwined, allegorical layer upon layer, each with their own focus.
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