Inside review – beautifully bleak dystopian puzzler

Six years after the deliciously dark Limbo, developer Playdead returns to Xbox and PC with another meticulously muted platformer about a boy on the run

If you hadn't realised that Inside was created by the same people behind Limbo, Playdead won't let you forget it for long. The intro is immediately familiar: a quietly foreboding woodland and a young boy on the run. It's a clear promise that those who appreciated the unique experience that Limbo offered can expect more of the same here.

Still, as you'd expect from a developer who's had more time (and presumably much more money) to refine their art, there are obvious differences. For one thing, there's more colour - that is, there is some where before there was none. The environments are still pretty bleak, from the rain-soaked countryside to the crumbling corporate interiors, but not quite monochromatic. Among the grey there are splashes of red, on the boy's jumper and on handholds that might otherwise be missed, yellow on chirping chicks in a farm populated by pig corpses and on cables that lead to secrets, and the colour of flesh.