Playdead's INSIDE

Playdead's second game, after Limbo, is a 2D platform-puzzler with a very dark heart. A boy runs through a hostile, half-explained world, and the game tells its story without words, through what you see and what's done to you. Critics received it about as well as any game of its kind.

It escalates deliberately: each section is designed to top the one before, alternating tense chases with puzzles that need real thought. Muted art and an ambient score carry the mood, with a very black humour surfacing occasionally.

You move right, mostly. Sections flip between running from something and standing still to work out a mechanism, and the pacing is tightly authored, so a session feels like a chapter of a film rather than a set of levels.

Puzzles are physical and environmental, solved by moving, pulling and timing. The platforming is forgiving on precision but ruthless on consequence, and the ending is the sort people discuss afterwards. Headphones make a large difference.

Reputation. This is one of the most admired games of the last decade in any format, and people who played it on console or PC want it on their phone, while others have simply heard the name. Limbo fans search for it specifically. It's also sought by players who want something short, serious and finished rather than an endless loop.

Desaturated greys and browns broken by rare splashes of colour, with heavy use of silhouette and fog, is the Playdead signature. Playdead's listing carries five screenshots. The interface is almost absent by design: no HUD, no score, no menus mid-play, just the boy and the world. The Adventure category undersells how austere it is.