It’s been a rough year. Outside of political catastrophes there is the undeniable fact that an overwhelming amount of amazing, talented individuals shuffled off the mortal coil in 2016. Couple that with plenty of anecdotal evidence ( I, personally, am having a real motherfucker of a December) and 2016 is a year in need of bright spots. One such spot, Super Mario Run , is underwhelming. Safe, costly and predictable, Super Mario Run is half the good things we wanted and a lot of the bad we didn’t (friend codes anyone?). It’s cool to see Mario on an iPhone in a game that is sort of fun, but frankly the sunshine and pop colors aren’t a vibe that scream “2016.”
Enter Inside.
Inside , from Playdead, isn’t technically a pure runner although many of its mechanics are runner-esque. You go back and forth through dismal but gorgeous levels solving puzzles in a quest to take a small, faceless boy to … something. I won’t spoil the ending, which you will definitely be googling to get some context, but Inside delivers on so many of the themes many of us felt bubbling to the surface during our woeful 2016.
Despair? Oh, Inside has that in spades. The very first puzzle you encounter has you sucking tiny baby chicks into an industrial machine. Spoiler: they come out OK. But it’s a harrowing moment when you realize the solution is to put these innocent cuddly things in harm’s way. There are also the stark and graphic death animations when the boy is caught by faceless guards who pummel and strangle him to death, or the vicious dogs who tear him apart. It’s a dark and unsettling experience.
Dystopia? You bet. Inside ’s world exists in a sci-fi industrial slaughterhouse full of mindless zombies. Not undead, but humans who just stand with shoulders slumped and bump into things until you put on a mind control cap and get them to move a heavy box or toss you across a chasm. A mostly greyscale palette casts the world in a dire shade of blech. It’s not a happy mushroom world with flowers and princesses. It’s a gritty, shitty place and you desperately want to be free of it.
Hope? Just barely. Like 2016, Inside doesn’t give you a lot to look forward too. Every vanquished challenge just leads to another creepier, more complex one. But literal rays of light can guide the way and the end of the game delivers such a bizarre nihilistic note of optimism it manages to hit harder than any saccharine cutscene full of kisses and cakes. Inside teaches you that survival is a prize to be won, that scrambling through a confounding, disturbed world to simply find a soft and neutral spot is reward enough. Soldiering on in spite of any sign that a forthcoming bliss will mitigate the despondency of your journey is the very definition of hope. Inside leaves you feeling prepared, somehow.
Super Mario Run is bad for 2016. It doesn’t give us a lesson, or a proper distraction from a world that many of us feel so suddenly unsure of. Inside does. It is a superbly crafted game and offers the escapism you’re craving, all while cast in a world that might be al bleak as the future you’re imagining. And, in the end, you don’t know that everything will be OK. You know that you just want to keep going. Because you can.
