The Inner Friend

Review

You play as a shadow, your inner friend who helps you overcome your darkest fears and traumatic memories from when you were a child, through solving puzzles and finding your way around obstacles, all while taking on and defeating your nightmarish foe to finally overcome them.

The game starts with you looking down on someone as you float above them; it seems like they’re having some sort of nightmare as they toss and turn screaming out in pain, holding their head in their hands. You notice that their face is shining white, and they stop moving as you move closer and closer, feeling yourself drawn into the white face. You start to free-fall, what looks like connections within the brain. Finally, you stop falling and appear in a room with a bed and toys all around the place, paper planes hang from the ceiling - this place looks very familiar to you. You look around and notice that there’s no door but there is a hole in the wall, and upon checking it out you notice it seems alive, almost breathing as it stretches into the distance.

You enter, and as you go further in you start running as you make your way towards the end. You reach the end, start to free fall again towards a bright light below, then buildings appear before you, all weird in shapes but some of them have bright white lights protruding from the windows and doorways. You fly towards these buildings to investigate; landing on one you go and have a look around, but there’s nothing of much interest except for those with the bright lights.  Upon checking them, you find a portal, and jump in wondering where next you’ll end up.

You re-appear from the portal in a dark and mysterious place; it looks like an old school - your old school - and everywhere seems dimly lit. You decide to take a look around and notice there’s nowhere to go except down some stairs.  As you reach the bottom you enter a large room; on the far side you spot someone, they seem to be in some sort of trouble, they’re banging on a metal barrier which has them trapped, trying to draw your attention. As you near a huge shadow appears behind them, followed by a scream, then they’re just still - lifeless. You then notice some sort of red beam which is attached to them, like something is draining them - but what?  And where do these beams go?

You continue to investigate this eerie and mysterious place, with bodies all around frozen still, like lost souls stuck in one moment of a memory, and more of these weird red beams which go through walls, floors and ceilings. As you continue forward searching the place for clues, you come across a classroom which you remember from your childhood (not one of your happiest memories); it’s then that you notice the source of the beams . . . it’s a monster, horrible and ugly . . .  a teacher, with homework, everyone’s nightmare as a kid!  From here you’ll have to figure out how to defeat the monster and free those caught in the beams so that you can overcome this bad memory once and for all!

You will have other traumatic memories that you’ll have to overcome as you progress through the game. Solving puzzles and obstacles which bar your way in each of them.  Collecting artefacts and notes will help rebuild your safe place, protecting you from your darkest fears.

The game is played out as a visually-driven narrative and is very well done.  The background music is very good and gives a nice atmospheric feel to the game.

In the settings you’ll find Graphics (Gamma, Display Mode, Resolution, Vsync, Texture, Shadow, effects and Post Process Quality).  For Audio, there is Music and Sound volume, Keyboard and Mouse (Rebind keys, Mouse Sensitivity), Controller and Language (choice of nine different languages).

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!