Iain Thomas

Inmost is a competent game, but nowhere does it excel. By splitting the gameplay into segments, the creators take what would have been three lackluster games and elevate them to the level of just passable, if that. Levels with the knight involve single-button-mashing combat that half-heartedly incorporates a dodge mechanic. However, as enemies remain dead or injured after defeating you, and because the player respawns inches from where they die, fights feel bland and uninspired. Conspicuously absent here is the jump mechanic used during the puzzle-solving segments; instead, we are treated to a grappling hook which can only be used in specific spots. The player is only allowed to fight four types of amorphous blobs in every level and control for the final boss (a dragon-like serpent) is revoked; here, the player watches a cutscene where the knight performs dazzling acrobatic feats--all the while thinking "I wish I could've done that." Inmost is at its best as a puzzle platformer, a fact showcased well by the father's levels. No new ground is broken here: the mechanics of push crate, activate pulley, get key, pull lever would be right at home in any Zelda game. Nonetheless, solutions do require a bit of thought and are rewarding once found. The wrap-around environments guide the player elegantly through a gothic style castle. This is the core appeal of the game and everything else feels like padding. The third character, the daughter, has her own puzzle driven levels which pale in comparison. Without the jump button, we are left to inch through the repeated environment of her house watching her stumble as she moves so much as a teapot--an endearing trait that was well programmed, admittedly, but one that grinds the pacing of the game to a literal crawl in service to the convoluted story. Inmost is in love with itself cinematically. Its environments work lush wonders with a limited palette of pixels, but it often forgets its identity as a game and puts on airs of being a film. In a clumsy attempt to make the daughter relatable, the player is forced to play hide-and-seek with her rabbit, a character who provides no shortage of dialogue to eliminate storytelling through pure exploration. One whole level is dedicated to walking an old man down several flights of stairs to pick up his coat while a narrator explains a mythology of flowers, pain, and sparks which is used as a backdrop for the game's real-life story of... imprisonment of children? A child trafficking operation? A marriage gone awry? A man who alienates his wife into murder by saving a girl from a burning building and then holding her captive? Spoilers? For as much as Inmost tries to pull all the pieces of its story together (often via excruciatingly long cutscenes), nothing jives. The result is what feels like a retrofitted story used to hammer together what must have started as three innocuously entertaining if simple video games. Frustratingly, much of what happens is shrugged off by an "and it was all a dream" type ending. The vagaries of the story and its ending are hastily swept under the rug by an unaforementioned male narrator who barges in to explain what, I guess, was the intended message of the game: living through pain. Perhaps a second playthrough would clarify that message. No doubt the pain of enduring the hackneyed pity-the-poor-little-girl storyline would. Ha.