After a time spent locked away in development, Inmates is up for parole.
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Armenian developer Davit Andreasyan has just completed his project called Inmates recently, releasing it with the help of publisher Iceberg Interactive last week, and in it we play as Jonathan, a man who wakes up in a dark prison and learns his wife Sarah has been held prisoner. Over the course of the next two to three hours we try to save her, and to do so we have to delve deep into the bowels of the facility.
To begin with we have no idea as to what’s going on, being simply thrown into the plot, and unfortunately we don’t understand what’s going on until very late. As soon as it starts, though, Inmates somes into its own thanks to its psychological horror.
We get more information on the story via notepads and wall scriblings, which tell us all about the other inmates in the prison. Some of these are just environmental storytelling, while others are needed to solve puzzles. Regular basic hints keep us clued in on where to head next and what we’re looking for, but Inmates’ darkness often obscures objectives and collectibles, making them very hard to see.
As a result the game creates this constant feeling of fear that we might have missed something or fail to trigger an event, and we often retrace our steps as a result. There’s no sprint function, though, and Jonathan’s slow movement makes it very annoying to revisit areas.
The puzzles themselves offer visual highlights in comparison to the dreary and uniform prison surroundings, but even then they aren’t exactly inspired either. It’s rarely obvious what we’re being asked to do when we start a puzzle, but after a few attempts the solutions usually present themselves. We didn’t really get stuck anywhere for more than 20 minutes, granted, but we didn’t get much satisfaction out of completing the puzzles either. It’s all just about hanging on and figuring out what to do.
As mentioned, Inmates is incredibly dark, so much so that we’d actually recommend upscaling the gamma significantly (you can only do this in the main menu, for some reason). Even then, collecting matches is necessary to grant light for brief periods of time – literally only around 10 seconds worth – but the light of the match is so small that you pretty much already have to be at the right place to see around you. Jonathan’s slow movement is even more of a pain when the matches go out so quickly as well, and some areas simply have to be explored blindly because of this feature.
Inmates’ atmosphere is very respectable, and reminded us a lot of the early Silent Hill titles. Even though the prison isn’t huge, it does offer some variety in terms of scenery, as there are a few oddly shaped cells towards the beginning that grabbed our attention, as well as some other mysterious locations we won’t spoil here. Andreasyen doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any means, and due to the limited technical side of the game we don’t get particularly memorable visuals either. The shaky camera is often used, perhaps overly so, which might be an issue for some, as will the long loading times.
During our time with Inmates we got to wondering what genre the game really fits into. The interaction with the world is reminiscent of what some might call a ‘walking simulator’, although the narrative elements are almost completely missing in the first 80 minutes or so. While there’s no real fear or feeling of danger, the game does offer some atmosphere reminiscent of horror too, although that’s a bit too inconsistent.
Although the PC requirements for the game are low, that’s not to say that the performance is necessarily good. In some places, for instance, jumpscares occur but the game engine itself will ruin the surprise due to a performance drop when a new object loads into the game world. At least these moments were few and far between though.
We finished the game in roughly two hours and although it’s cheap, we can’t honestly recommend the experience. It feels like a game that shows the developer’s diverse knowledge, but in terms of a game in itself, it has some way to go before offering a compelling experience.
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Keyword: Inmates