In Between is a story-driven puzzle game. The protagonist is a man dying from cancer – not a subject often touched on by video games, but handled very well here. The award-winning game by gentlymad and Headup Games is currently available on Steam, but may be released for Android and iOS later in the year.
The concept is simple. You guide the man through a maze to the door leading to the next puzzle. You can move left or right, but you can’t jump or crawl. So how do you get around tricky obstacles such as blocks or walls? Easy, you change the direction in which gravity works. With one tap, up becomes down. Depending on which way you set gravity to work, you can walk on floors, ceilings and walls. Simple, right?
Well, no. Not all of the walls can be walked on. Anything spiky will hurt you, sending you back to the beginning of the level. As will being crushed by falling objects. I made it to level 5 before getting stuck, repeating the level over and over as I repeatedly failed to avoid the obstacles which proved irritating given the narrator’s insistence that obstacles are what makes us strong. By level 6 (out of 60) I wanted to stop. I will admit that the difficulty really makes you think about the way you approach each level. On the flipside it’s not a game for the easily frustrated.
“One of the strengths of the game’s narrative is the passive manner in which it can be consumed”
Aside from the occasionally infuriating gameplay, it’s a very good game. The soundtrack captures the emotion well and each level is hand drawn. The visual palette is rather dark, most of the levels being painted in brown and grey, but broken up by flashes of the man’s happy memories – reading beneath a tree or building a snowman with his dad, for example.
In fact, one of the strengths of the game’s narrative is the passive manner in which it can be consumed. Unlike most other puzzle games where each level is connected by a page of text that isn’t engaging enough to read through, you actually want to listen to the man telling the story in this game. Each snippet of information is triggered by reaching certain points in the level and you only have to listen to learn what’s going on. Unless you hit an obstacle before he finishes speaking, in which case you’ll probably miss what was said, the words drowned out by the sound effects.
Honestly, this game is not for me, but for anyone who loves brain-teasers and doesn’t get easily annoyed, this is definitely the next game to buy. It’s sure to keep you entertained for hours at a time and with each snippet of story that you hear, you’ll want to carry on playing to hear more. It’s a simple yet challenging game made even stronger by the fact that it’s actually about something.