“Sooner or later, everybody dies… It’s ridiculous.”

In Between immediately draws you into the game with this hard-hitting statement. It opens with a scene of the main character weakly climbing out of a hospital bed into a wheelchair, and leaving the hospital. Traversing through a short run through the city, a whole new world opens up as the game puts you into the protagonist’s mind.

In Between is a story-based puzzle solving game. In the character’s mind, he is reflecting on moments in his life that brought him to this point. He is now fighting terminal cancer, but is struggling with leaving his wife and daughter alone.

PLOT

The main plot of the game opens up more with the more levels you pass. There are 60 levels total. The first 10 are the tutorial levels, with the next 50 separated into 5 categories. Each category is based on one of the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

As more of the story is shown, you learn different pieces of his life. From him being neglected by his father growing up, to marrying the love of his life, to currently being in denial about his own illness, the story is truly deep and moving.

GAMEPLAY

The main gameplay mechanic is what sets it aside from other puzzle-solving games, and that is a gravity shift. The player uses the left toggle stick to move the protagonist left and right, while using the right to change the gravity. You not only stand on the floor, but also on the walls and ceiling, avoiding obstacles through each level.

Each stage of grief introduces you to new obstacles, such as darkness closing in on you through the denial, or bubbles of rage throughout anger.

The game doesn’t outright explain the controls to you, or how to handle any of the new obstacles. Instead, the narrative drives you to figure out the solution on your own.

PROS

The game’s hand-drawn graphics make the cutscenes really beautiful and ominous, with the narrative just as dark and moody as the scenery displayed.

Some puzzle-solving games are blatantly easy, but not In Between. It’s challenging enough to be addictive, and keep you wanting to come back and complete more levels.

The gravity shift is the best part, no doubt. Each level doesn’t have just one solution, so you get to continue trying to find more ways to defeat that level.

CONS

The levels feel a little repetitive after a while. Each level’s scenery is different shades of brown, with cracks in the background showing gears or sometimes a memory. But even with the addition of a different obstacle in each category, everything else stays pretty similar.

Sometimes, the challenge of the levels can break up the consistency of the storytelling. It becomes a lot of trial and error rather than strategic puzzle-solving, and that can cause the sporadic memories to be very broken up. To combat this, you can skip the last three levels in each category, which may prove to be helpful to some, but moreso puts a band-aid on the issue rather than actually solving it, especially since that causes you to miss more story.

VERDICT

In Between is available for the price of $11.99 on the PS4 store, the Nintendo store, the Xbox One store, and Steam, all for the same price. It’s a fair price for what it is, but the replayability isn’t as high as other games for a similar price.

This is an enjoyable game with dark storytelling, and is very addicting for a puzzle-solving game. With few issues but so many pros, it’s definitely worth a playthrough!

Score: 6 out of 10