The Inner World is a wonderfully creative point and click adventure game that recently has been released for the Xbox One. The story centers around Robert, the bumbling, naive adopted son of a prominent wind monk. When a bird steals the monk’s treasured pendant, Robert goes on adventure to reclaim it.
The world building in this game is incredibly rich and immersive with a variety of hilarious characters, beautiful sets, and an interesting culture to investigate. The console port is also done quite well and has none of the awkward controls and frustrating interface problems that plague many other ports from PC.
The art style is a touch reminiscent of Machinarium and the eclectic characters are a real joy to interact with. There are some unsavory, exclusionary lines of dialogue scattered around, which really disappointed me, but overall, this is a must play if you like point and click adventure games.
My biggest concern with puzzle games is, well, the puzzles, and boy does The Inner World deliver! The puzzles range in difficulty with enough head scratchers to keep you coming back again and again to work out the solution. Often, the aim of the puzzle is a bit absurdly silly (i.e. knitting a special onesie for a baby), but that just adds to the fun.
Robert’s oblivious naivete makes for some awkwardly hilarious moments and misunderstandings. The game isn’t terrible accessible, unfortunately. The controls aren’t terribly difficult, but there are no accessibility settings that would allow disabled gamers to tailor the game to their needs. I am thankful for the subtitles and voiced dialogue, but the accessibility is pretty scant apart from that.
Summary
On the whole, The Inner World is a fantastic puzzle game, not to mention a seamless port from PC. A deeply engaging world, satisfyingly challenging puzzles, and a fun story make for a truly wonderful playthrough.
Jess contributed 16 articles to ICXM in 2017, covering game reviews, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @Enceladosaurus.