Inmost Review – A Grim Glimpse

Don’t let the trailer fool you — Inmost’s trailer leans heavily on horror elements, but the game digs deeper. While the spooky stuff makes for better trailer fodder, it’s the game as a whole that will leave the biggest impact on you. That depth is not something a brief trailer can convey.

Inmost tells a handful of different stories at the start of the game. By the end, those stories are interwoven with a few twists that pleasantly surprised me. With that said, maybe “pleasant” isn’t the best word to use. Inmost is a dark game that deals with some serious mental health issues, but the shadow of depression is darkest. Inmost isn’t trying to build tension with it’s preemptive warning about the content of the game being upsetting for some players — that’s a legitimate trigger warning.

I played Inmost on my iPhone, via Apple Arcade. Inmost is set to release on the Nintendo Switch and on Steam, but no release date is posted at the time of this review.

I mention the platform because players choosing to try the game using a console controller (or a controller that works with an iPhone) will likely have a more enjoyable experience than I did attempting to control the combat with swipes and taps.

I don’t have a controller for use with my iPhone or iPad, so while playing Inmost I used the touch controls the game has built in. The touch controls worked well enough for the slow-moving parts of the game, which are about 70% of the gameplay experience. Slowly sliding your finger to the left or right causes characters to move in the desired direction. The controls weren’t an issue for any character but the knight.

With the knight, tapping is how you swing your sword and use your grappling hook. Swiping your finger causes the knight to dash in the direction of the swipe, but if you’re not fast enough the knight will just take a step or two in the direction you swiped.

Early in the game, when enemies are spread out or easy to dispatch one-by-one, dealing with the tap combat was fine. I’d run over to an enemy, tap-tap-tap, swipe the knight out of the way to avoid the enemy’s attack, and move the knight back to melee range to finish the monster off with another few taps.

Near the end of the game, the knight faces swarms of enemies that require the knight to move in and out of enemies’ attack ranges usually with just enough time for a quick stab before they have to dash out of the way of the enemy that was moving in behind them.

Managing those combat situations was frustrating. Sometimes the quick-stab morphed into an elaborate attack that cost me the half-second I needed to dash out of the way. Or the game wouldn’t register I swiped (which, to be fair, I may not have been pressing hard enough in an effort to pull off the dash as fast as I wanted to) and the knight would just take a step instead of dashing away.

The penalty for dying was simply respawning a short distance away, so I never felt too distraught as I fumbled through the game’s combat, but it was certainly my least favorite aspect of the game.

The game’s pixel graphics easily made up for the cumbersome combat.

Every scene is filled with so much detail that I would often stop playing and pull my phone closer to my face to get a better look at the pixelated details. Conveying such an emotional experience with what is essentially Game Boy Color-style graphics, was an impressive achievement.

The story of Inmost, as mentioned, is grim. As the title implies, the game focuses on our inmost fears and struggles. Depression, anxiety, forgiveness…they are all focal points of the game’s narrative addressed in sometimes heartbreaking ways.

While I can’t say that Inmost is a game to play to escape the challenges of the real world, I will say that it is a game that you should strongly consider, particularly if you appreciate games that have a heavy focus on the narrative experience.

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Inmost was reviewed via an Apple Arcade subscription, paid for by Epic Brew.