Published: 17 May 2025
Last updated: 27 May 2025
The Inner World
- Developed by: Studio Fizbin
- Published by: Headup Games
- Released on: 2013
- Genre: Point-and-click Adventure
- Rating: 3/5
A cute and pleasant point-and-click adventure game overall - with an array of quirky characters and tries (sometimes successfully) to balance its somewhat serious, if rather cliche, plot with plenty of humour and whimsy. The puzzles themselves, and thus the game, lean relatively on the easy side for a typical point-and-click fare, although there is a fantastic in-built hint system to guide even the most unseasoned/impatient players through with oodles of curated hints. The art design on display is rather odd, when initially presented with the contrast between the dingy, if detailed subterranean world vs. the odd, stylised (if a little cute) 2d carrot-nosed pencil drawings layered on top, although I did grow to like it, definitely helped by the characterisation and VA on display which continued to match the slightly-wonky, uneven but charming and obvious passion for point-and-click games on display. In fact, “slightly-wonky, uneven but charming” quintessentially sums up this game.
The Inner World: The Last Wind Monk
- Developed by: Studio Fizbin
- Published by: Headup Games, Kalypso Media
- Released on: 2017
- Genre: Point-and-click Adventure
- Rating: 2/5
I didn’t even realise there was a sequel! And is functionally independently playable thanks to the introductory summary that encapsulates the events of the first game - although this comes at a cost that’s quite noticeable, especially when playing these games relatively back-to-back, in having to retread a lot of the same story beats already outlined in the first game, with a previously unseen-and-unknown lackey replacing the original villain.
Its a quintessential sequel, in being very much “more of the same”, with definite improvements in the point-and-click puzzle territory in feeling more complex and ambitious (in both the puzzles and the opportunity to switch between characters) - however pretty much everything surrounding the gameplay (i.e. story) feels a little worse in the form of diminishing returns, and the extra length in the form of another chapter (6 vs. the original game’s 5) does little to help that, and unfortunately the charm is lost a little despite the clearly increased budget and experience poured from the first game.
