“Mother. Father. Always you wrestle inside me.” This quote from Terrence Malick’s 2011 film The Tree of Life came to mind quite often during my play through of InnerSpace.
Innerspace is an incredibly ambitious title for PolyKnight Games’ first game. The game tries to be a lot of things all at once, and while it succeeds wildly in some areas it fails hard in others.
Stuck between a relaxing experience and a hardcore exploration game, Innerspace will have you transitioning between quite a few different emotions as you progress through the game.
First and foremost, the visuals are stunning. Every level is ripe with color and whether you’re soaring through the air or exploring under water, the game is downright beautiful. With such a wide array of color and no visible horizon to be found, it can be difficult to navigate at times through this sea of color.
The controls are a mixed bag as well. While flying feels great, the lack of a stop or hover ability combined with the lack of any noticeable horizon can have you spinning around with no idea which way is up or down. Once you finally regain your bearings, you’ll zoom by an objective – causing the process to start all over again. Luckily, there are points spread throughout the world that allow you to dock and regain your composure, point yourself in the right direction and then take off again. Every so often when you find yourself flying around aimlessly looking for your next artifact, it’s a good idea to dock and survey the lay of the land and sea before wasting too much of your time.
The game has an infuriating lack of direction, causing you to wander back and forth looking for objectives until you just happen to stumble upon one. The difference between a calming experience and an excruciating one can be so miniscule. With a little more direction, Innerspace could be a surreal out of body experience thanks to the incredible visuals and sound. Thankfully, you can smash into terrain and objects with reckless abandon as it does very little to break your experience or damage your ship since you will be crashing into almost everything in your path.
The story is where Innerspace truly shines. A magical tale of an ancient civilization and the demigods that ruled them unfolds as you beat the bosses and uncover more relics. The first boss, the Sunfish, lets you know that their immortality comes at a price. To be immortal they must collect wind and to collect it they must take it from elsewhere – leaving others without. Upon finding this out your journey truly begins as you search for a way to escape the inverse so that you may tell the stories for those who can no longer tell the stories themselves.
Every time I began to lose myself in the gorgeous visuals and trance-like soundtrack I would decide to try and complete an objective which would take me completely out of the experience altogether. This game is constantly at odds with itself and in the end neither side truly wins.
If you are looking for a relaxing experience and don’t care about completing the objectives this game will give you hours of beautiful exploration. If you want to sit down and collect all of the relics and encounter the boss battles in order to see the surprisingly deep story come to life prepare for some agonizing moments where up is down, left is right and with little to no direction guiding you, it will seem at times that you are wandering around aimlessly. The lack of direction truly is a shame because there could be a great game in here somewhere.
Innerspace is a notable first entry for PolyKnight and with a little refinement their next game could have a ton of promise.
*InnerSpace was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
