Inside is a puzzle-platformer developed by Playdead, presented in a 2.5D side-scrolling format with a dark, predominantly monochromatic visual style. The player controls an unnamed boy navigating a dystopian environment, solving environmental puzzles, avoiding hostile guards and creatures, and using a mind-control device to manipulate bodies in order to progress. The game features no dialogue or HUD, relying on visual and audio cues to guide the player through its increasingly surreal and dangerous settings. In a hostile, dystopian world, a young boy flees through a forest pursued by masked guards with flashlights, vehicles, and attack dogs. Escaping the patrols, he crosses into farmland overrun by parasitic worms and rampaging animals, then reaches a seemingly abandoned city where lines of zombie-like people are moved through mind control. Using a mind-control helmet, the boy manipulates these drone-like figures to press deeper into a vast underground facility of flooded chambers and laboratories, where scientists conduct disturbing underwater experiments on human bodies. An underwater creature attaches a device to the boy, allowing him to breathe beneath the surface as he pushes further into the complex, drawn toward something at its center.