History VideoGame / Inside2016

''Inside'' (stylized ''INSIDE'') is a PuzzlePlatformer by Creator/{{Playdead}}, the developers of ''[[VideoGame/Limbo2010 Limbo]]''. Although its name wasn't revealed until E3 2014, the game was in development since 2010, only a few months after ''Limbo'' was released. It runs on the UsefulNotes/{{Unity}} engine. The game was released on June 29, 2016 for UsefulNotes/XboxOne, July 7, 2016 for Microsoft Windows, August 23, 2016 for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and June 28, 2018 for UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[spoiler:Should you crush what seems to be the CEO, he suffers the fate of being pushed out a window by a massive BodyOfBodies, falling a great height, screaming unnervingly loudly all the way down, and being reduced to nothing but a red splatter on the ground.]]

** [[https://imgur.com/a/USImDCiphers etched onto glass panels]] in the labs decipher the title of an Creator/EECummings poem, ''pity this busy monster, manunkind'', which is a lament of the triumph of progress and its subjugation and rejection of the natural world. Sound familiar?

''Inside'' (stylized ''INSIDE'') is a PuzzlePlatformer by Creator/{{Playdead}}, the developers of ''VideoGame/Limbo2010''. Although its name wasn't revealed until E3 2014, the game was in development since 2010, only a few months after ''Limbo'' was released. It runs on the UsefulNotes/{{Unity}} engine. The game was released on June 29, 2016 for UsefulNotes/XboxOne, July 7, 2016 for Microsoft Windows, August 23, 2016 for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and June 28, 2018 for UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch.

''Inside'' (stylized ''INSIDE'') is a PuzzlePlatformer by Creator/{{Playdead}}, the developers of ''VideoGame/{{Limbo}}''. Although its name wasn't revealed until E3 2014, the game was in development since 2010, only a few months after ''Limbo'' was released. It runs on the UsefulNotes/{{Unity}} engine. The game was released on June 29, 2016 for UsefulNotes/XboxOne, July 7, 2016 for Microsoft Windows, August 23, 2016 for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, and June 28, 2018 for UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch.

[[SimilarlyNamedWorks Shouldn't be confused with]] the 2007 French [[Film/Inside2007 home invasion film]] or Creator/{{Willem Dafoe}}'s 2023 psychological thriller.

[[SimilarlyNamedWorks Shouldn't be confused with]] the 2007 French [[Film/Inside2007 home invasion film]].

* HopeSpot: [[spoiler:You climb up a chain out of a flooded area, heading for a catwalk bathed in the first rays of ''sunlight'' you've seen all game... and then the chain slips, and you fall back down into the water, where the StringyHairedGhostGirl seizes you to give you the "upgrade" that will eventually lead you to the Huddle. You won't see the sun again until the very end, and by then you have been subsumed by a mass of flesh.]]

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The StringyHairedGhostGirl's attacks are... very physical, and she is apparently naked, [[spoiler:'''and''' she does give the boy a mouth-to-mouth when giving him the ability to breathe underwater.]]

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: The StringyHairedGhostGirl's attacks are... very physical, and she is apparently naked.

* BarbieDollAnatomy: The underwater StringyHairedGhostGirl doesn't seem to have genitalia. [[spoiler:...and apparently neither does the main character.]]

** In the underwater facilities, [[spoiler: the boy is dragged underwater and drowned by TheOphelia. As he goes down, he is latched to a cable that "upgrades" him so he can stay underwater indefinitely, and can control humans without the helmet.]] You keep this for the rest of the game.
** The game's final sequence [[spoiler: is as (the controller of) a lumbering mass of flesh that's strong enough to barge through walls and can't be killed by anything in-game.]]

* AllAccordingToPlan: [[spoiler:It's pretty much spelled out by the final sequence of the game that the scientists were expecting the Huddle to attempt an escape. The scientists are rushing to the tank to see the moment when you merge with it, are watching calmly from catwalks along your path, provide the Huddle with cubes to assist in the "escape", and are even gathered around a diorama of the final scene of the regular ending that the Huddle just happens to crash into. One Youtuber [[https://youtu.be/H-PdmGz8rus?t=793 zoomed into that diorama]] and sure enough, there's a model of the Huddle in there, in the game's signature yellow shade. The small fetch quest involving a run across a fire-strewn path makes it pretty obvious that the scientists are trying to test what the Huddle is capable of doing.]]
* AllThereInTheManual: [[http://schedule.gdconf.com/session/huddle-up-making-the-spoiler-of-inside Playdead calls]] the [[spoiler:mass of bodies at the end the "Huddle"]].
* AlternateRealityGame: Players noticed that a printer in the lab by the spherical tank was printing out a sequence of dots, dashes and slashes. While it was eligible as Morse code, what was found was [[https://wiki.gamedetectives.net/index.php?title=Inside_ARG the beginning of a full [=ARG=]]] surrounding a mysterious "terminal41", alongside text and images that may hint at Playdead's next game, which is a science fiction-themed title to be set on a distant planet.
* AmbiguousEnding: After a long, terrifying and painful journey attempting to escape to safety, you ultimately end up [[spoiler:as a fleshy husk motionless on a beach (apparently) just outside the facility. It's unclear whether you survived, whether you really escaped, or whether it was the correct way to deal with the MindControl. Fan consensus is that this ending was what the scientists were looking for (see All According to Plan above.)]]
* AmbiguousSituation: A whole lot worse to figure out this time too -- unlike ''Limbo'', which was almost entirely symbolic, it appears that ''INSIDE'' does hold some answers to its most confusing questions. [[spoiler: It's widely accepted that the bonus ending basically tells the player that the boy is under the mind control, but this creates a lot more questions- if he is, why can he emote so effectively and pass for a real human perfectly? And who is controlling him? [[MetaFiction Is it you]]?]]
** There's also a lot of ambiguity on whether or not you were ever "outside" to begin with. Certain things like spotlights that seem a tad too convenient, the insistence of a lot of your human stalkers to at least try and take you alive, the omnipresence of certain things [[spoiler: like the Orbs required for the secret ending]], and the sheer EldritchLocation level use of geometry and space would all seem to point to the entire game taking place in some sort of massive facility. [[spoiler: One thing that further cements this is during your rampage as the Huddle, you fall into a small diorama that is an exact scale replica of the place you find yourself in after "escaping" the facility, making the whole rampage sequence seem like a huge experiment.]]
** If the boy really was [[spoiler: a remote body the entire time, like the ones the scientists were controlling, does that mean the part where you take control of the Huddle and supposedly escape the facility is actually just [[AllAccordingToPlan another part of the experimental process?]]]]

* BloodierAndGorier: Compared to Playdead's previous work, ''Limbo'', ''Inside'' is even more gruesome. The boy can be shot, have his throat ripped out by dogs, drown, be blown apart by sonic waves, and be choked to death. [[spoiler: And once the boy joins the Huddle, anyone who gets in your way is trampled. And should you crush the lone man in the office, his body will be reduced to a red splatter on both the floor and your body as his scream rings out.]]

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: The mind control helmets all emit a stale shade of yellow. [[spoiler: The parasitic worms that are found burrowed into the pigs (and control one into attacking you) are the same colour. The mysterious Orbs hidden throughout the game emit a light of the same colour, and the cabling that hints at an Orb's nearby location is also that same yellow. Those people pods at the beginning of the game? A window in the door gives off a glow of that same yellow, too.]]

* CreepyCornfield: There's one on the farm.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: [[spoiler: Should you crush what seems to be the CEO, he suffers the fate of being pushed out a window by a massive BodyOfBodies, falling a great height, screaming unnervingly loudly all the way down, and being reduced to nothing but a red splatter on the ground.]]

* {{Dystopia}}: The whole game takes place inside an utterly massive complex built upon the ruins of a much older, dilapidated city. People are enslaved en masse, and used as either fodder for experiments on weird, otherworldly MindControl technology or slave labor using helmets that command them telepathically. Parts of the city have no clear purpose and are unnecessarily huge, and seem to go on forever. People in white masks appear to be in control of herding the captured slaves, and these masked individuals notably include children. At the end of the game, you enter what appears to be the newest part of the city, and get in on the conspiracy mentioned above. [[spoiler: You hijack a massive fusion of several people together into something that looks straight out of ''Franchise/SilentHill'' before going on a rampage. Whatever the ball of flesh was made for is never completely explained, but considering the plugs you pull off of it look identical to mind control helmets, it's possible it was controlling all the "active" slaves you saw towards the beginning of the game.]]

* EverythingTryingToKillYou: To the point where you're nervous around a flock of chicks. Luckily they're harmless. [[spoiler: You still have to blow the poor buggers through a grain vacuum to solve a puzzle, however. All but one of them survive this, thankfully.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Early in the game, you'll go to a barn where several chicks will instinctively flock to you like orphans desperately looking for a new mother. [[spoiler: Later, you gain the ability to lead groups of humans into following you and helping you traverse obstacles.]]
** In addition, when you fling the chicks onto a crate above to get it down, the chicks fall and one of them stays on the floor, apparently dead. [[spoiler: Just like one of the bodies used as part of having to get through a certain door. Instead of mind-controlling it, you have to drag it onto a platform with the bodies you control to activate the door release]].

* FullBoarAction: One early confrontation is with a very, ''very'' irritable pig. It's big, it's ugly, and it ''shrieks''.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: If the man sitting alone in the big office near the end is indeed the [[spoiler: director/CEO of the lab conducting horrific human experiments and/or generating a race of humanoid slaves, then seeing him splattered by the Huddle (his possible own creation), gives one a strangely satisfying feeling.]]
* HopeSpot: [[spoiler:You climb up a chain out of a flooded area, heading for a catwalk bathed in the first rays of ''sunlight'' you've seen all game . . . and then the chain slips, and you fall back down into the water, where the StringyHairedGhostGirl seizes you to give you the "upgrade" that will eventually lead you to the Huddle. You won't see the sun again until the very end, and by then you have been subsumed by a mass of flesh.]]

* TheManyDeathsOfYou: Of course. However, it is implied that [[spoiler: the CEO]] wants the boy captured alive, as the armed guards use tranquilizer darts rather than bullets. Also, if an adult catches the boy, they subdue him with what looks like chloroform rather than outright strangling him.

* TwistEnding: More like a ''wild veer off the road'' ending. You will '''NOT''' see it coming. [[spoiler:Suffice it to say it appears that the main character's goal was to disable the giant blob by pulling off mind-control helmets plugged on to it, but he gets absorbed into it, and through it, goes on a rampage, destroying the facility -- and a man who looks suspiciously like a CorruptCorporateExecutive, the only intentional death in the game. The game also shifts from a tonally bleak cinematic platformer into a [[BlackComedy comedic]], almost [[Creator/BennyHill Benny Hill-esque]] rampage.]] Oh, and to top it all off, [[spoiler: the game has ANOTHER ending that implies the boy to be just another mind controlled human, and that YOU were the one controlling him.]]

** During [[spoiler: your rampage as the Huddle, you smash into a doorway, revealing what may be a CorruptCorporateExecutive, scared shitless, against a window. Behind said window is a very, very, very long fall.]] Pretty easy to guess what that means.
** Finally, [[spoiler: while smashing open one final wall, the blob that is you falls through, revealing the outside world. You fall, rolling down a hill, before coming to rest in the single bit of sunlight in the entire game.]] Roll credits.