I played a bit more of In Between last night. It is an extraordinary game. I can easily see this as being this gen's Braid or Fez for me - my favourite XB1 puzzle game of the entire gen.
Positives:
*Wonderful art style and presentation. The way the game transports you from one set of puzzles to another is fantastic. Whenever you're not in a puzzle, you walk from left to right to advance the story and your character + environment transforms as you do so. An example: maybe your character is a small child at school, but you walk right and the environment changes to some dreary factory and your character is taller, older, shaved, and wearing completely different clothes. It's very neat.
*Intriguing and potentially heart-breaking story (as far as I can tell - I'm still early but I'm sure the ending of the game will make me sad). The main character is diagnosed with cancer - as you travel from puzzle to puzzle he narrates about different parts of his life: he talks about his past (childhood, girlfriends, graduation, etc...) and about how his cancer affects him currently.
*The dev has very cleverly transformed and leveraged story events/concepts into puzzle mechanics. I.E. early on there is a story section about the narrator being afraid of the dark as a little boy. Then you encounter a heartfelt sequence where mom reassures him that "If you face the dark, it will be afraid of you" or something similar. So in that story sequence, you start to face the dark directly and fight it off successfully. Then boom, you're now in the next world of puzzles, and darkness is a puzzle mechanic (and you need to face the dark, just like when you were a child, to fight it off and proceed through each puzzle).
*Incredible music that fits the mood in each puzzle room, and more importantly also fits in very well with the game's bittersweet themes
*The pause menu is refreshingly unique. The pause menu is snappy, responsive, and has modern gaming amenities (level select, the ability to see which levels you have beaten, and not 100% sure but I believe it also shows you which levels you've found collectible in). That should be expected, but what really seems ingenious is the pause menu is designed like an arcade box/unit. When you pause, you see an arcade box's television monitor. And from there you can hit Left on the control stick to control a young, child version of the narrator, completely separate from the main campaign's story, puzzles, etc... When you control the young, child version of the narrator, he's in his bedroom, decked out with all the awesome things you'd expect a 10-year-old to have in his room: television, video games, toys, etc... The good old days, before he got cancer. ='(
*The world structure is creative too. The developers have structured each world of puzzles to mimic the five stages of grief/death, with respect to the narrator's cancer diagnosis. The first world is the Tutorial. Second world is Denial. Third world is Anger. I feel like whenever I get to Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance, I'm going to be shattered emotionally. =(
*Game play: In Between nails puzzle game play. It's a mix between platforming / puzzle game play with refreshing controls. The game only uses the left stick and right stick. The left stick moves the character, and the right stick changes your footing (or gravity). So push Up on the right stick so that gravity is flipped vertically. Use left or right on the right stick to flip gravity horizontally. And so on. You traverse by using a combination of conventional movement (left stick), and swinging/changing/flipping gravity (right stick).
Negatives:
*The only negative I can think of is that the first 1 second of game play has a terrible animation - the main character is in a wheelchair and it looks terrible when he turns left-to-right or right-to-left. I've let the developer know lol, but I've emphasized strongly with the dev that I pretty much love everything else about the game.
I hope gentlymad's next game is just as good. The only other two times I've been so unexpectedly impressed with an indie game that I've messaged a dev are: 1) Pneuma Breath Of Life, and those guys are coming with another XB1 game soon called Turing Test, and 2) QUBE Director's Cut, and those guys are coming out with QUBE 2 on XB1 soon as well.
Shame I'm the only one on my friends list playing it. Going to try out the coop during E3 when friends come over.
