Interior Worlds Views: 132
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Game Description
Empty lots. Blackened buildings. Dimly lit hallways.
They all live and breathe just as we do.
Welcome to Interior Worlds; an ambient first person exploration game where you'll dive into strange, yet familiar spaces. Temporary gaps and portals we cross at some point or another - now yearning for a closer look. A look that can only be seen properly through the lens of an SLR camera.
- Use your vintage and mysterious analog camera to capture stunning photographs of environmental anomalies throughout each space. Keep a sharp eye out while traversing the more... unsettling locations.
- Track and share your own in-game catalog of photos, pre-filtered with subtle layers of peak liminal crust.
- Ten unique thresholds to traverse. A roadside hotel, empty movie theater, dying mall, and many more. Every environment is hand-crafted in a loving throwback to late 90's and early 00's graphics.
- Unparalleled interactivity. Activate vending machines, phones, sinks, televisions, or simply turn the lights on or off for a different photo-moment vibe.
- Immersive and unsettling soundscape. Melt into an eerie mix of low, rumbling drones and soft, stretched pads during the journey.
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No. of Reviews: 9
Review 1
Purchased!
The game is definitely a vibe, I bought it on a whim one night when I just didn't know what game to play. I feel like the dev really cares about his games. I found myself jumpscared way more often than even a horror game, and thats because this game isnt really a horror game, so when scary things happen... theyre pretty effin scary and catch you off guard. There are tons of secrets in the game and its actually fun and feels rewarding to find them if youre into that kind of thing
Review 2
Purchased!
Warning: possible spoilers. The Curse of Liminality This is a decent attempt at a "liminal spaces" game, with a focus on exploration. Many have tried, but as of now this sub-genre is chock-full of broken asset flip shovelware and "backrooms"-style cheap jumpscare nonsense. This game takes a different approach, a return to the roots in some sense. PROS: atmosphere, general visual design, simplicity It's a very casual stroll through a succession of unsettling locations, wielding a mysterious camera, a peculiar compass and an optional flashlight. Your goal is to find a way out of these dark worlds, by capturing their ominous, decaying beauty and documenting anomalies. The first thing that strikes your eye when you start the game is the filter. That screen door effect is real, maaan. Literally, at some levels you can barely make out anything at first, the filter is far too intense and distracting. You'll see figures in the distance which aren't there, (well, some of them are, but more on that later), borked silhouettes of things in your peripheral vision, and maybe even produce some bricks because of the sheer unforgiving pixelized suspense it creates. That's the best kind of spooks - the self-inflicted kind. I'd call that emergent spooks. Very appropriate for the setting, too. I'm completely indifferent to anything photography related, but love the chosen aesthetics - that liminal fandom/subculture/whatever stuff is fascinating. You can pick up certain props and sort of position them for your photos. Counts for some interesting visuals; physics can be wonky though, traffic cones and garbage bags flying all over the place. You can turn on the TV, use soda machine or even an ATM, but ultimately these interactions serve no purpose. Nor should they. These places are meaningless. Their only goal is to exist. Ultimate emptiness, localized void. Or, at least, they were supposed to be such. But then something went wrong. CONS: level design, sound design, performance issues, save system I loved the prologue and hoped it would be more like this - sinister changing worlds, searching for new paths and interesting environmental problem-solving, akin to the dev's previous game, Hypnagogia. But the levels here are simpler, more open, and, frankly, predictable and repetitive. It becomes glaringly obvious at the suburb map, which is very atmospheric at the beginning, but gets tedious and boring very soon. Something's not right with the balance of content and liminality - the maps are at the same time too empty and too cluttered; too many common out-of-place elements between locations are cheapening the mood greatly. And it's not about the limited amount of assets (which does make the levels look a bit samey though), but because of the tone. Unexpected and unnerving things, like TVs at the hotel, the whole movie theater level, the twin peaxel museum, are exactly the kind of content that puts an emphasis on liminal feels. While I certainly did not expect a Skinamarink reference tucked in the corner, I felt like there should have been much more of that weird mind-effing stuff. ...But we mostly have bog-standard "horror" visual tropes instead, and they are the same everywhere. Each location has the same boring and predictable black ooze, holes in the walls and suggestively bent bars/gates - oh, and cheesy shadowy figures in the distance. It sucks all the joy and anticipation out of exploration, because you already know what you will find in that next dark corner. It's fine to have a suspicious spot here and there, but trying to add context to places where there should be none is a mistake. They perfectly exist without. The soundtrack does not help. The ambience is too loud and distracting, sometimes feeling completely out of place. I don't think that crumped hotel interiors with their carpets, narrow hallways and tiny rooms should sound the same as an empty airport or an underground parking lot. Reverberating echo. Technically (as credits tell us) these are different ambient tracks, but they are all too similar, the droning is too loud and obnoxious. This ruins immersion. Also, what's the deal with movement and collision? Our character can't run for ten seconds without breathing heavily, poor thing; he trips on tiniest ledges and has to jump to get on a sidewalk. This is annoyingly inconsistent too, present on some maps, smooth on others. The game has the same sad saving system, or rather a lack of such - checkpoints only at the beginning of a level. Maps are big and labyrinthian, movement is slow, and part of objective spots are randomized, so good luck exploring... again and again. There are performance issues, some maps run significantly worse than others; the game is poorly optimized in general. There is no controller support - yet? - which is baffling. The dev claims he loves retro games, and his own stuff is heavily stylized not only visually, but gameplay-wise too... still having problems with proper controller support implementation. Conclusion The game doesn't take itself too seriously. If you've played Hypnagogia: Boundless Dreams, do not expect the same level of detail, narrative and world-building here. Hypnagogia has more liminality and horror in it, despite being neither a dedicated liminal nor horror game. Interior Worlds is a silly little thing, more of a sidestep, than a full-fledged idea. A short philosophical mood-setting monologue in the beginning is as much as you get. That's too bad, because the first half an hour or so were great; I had a feeling it was a setup for something bigger, fleshed out. Alas, liminal games are cursed or something. This one feels more like an experiment in aesthetics/exploration, with a bunch of unrelated elements thrown in. According to the dev, there will be significant content updates, new locations and fixes. I don't want to be too harsh or to bash on the game, but it surely could use more content and/or some level redesign. Still, it's a neat experience and can be recommended to the fans even in its current state. If you like games with similar themes and atmosphere, follow my curator: empty places [https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44239617-empty-places/]
Review 3
Purchased!
Relaxing, creepy, and creative all at the same time. This is a wonderful idea I'd love to see more of. Great work!
Review 4
Purchased!
You know, I used to think that Interior Worlds didn't really scare me. And in many ways, it didn't. I never found myself feeling that tension, that heat in my face, that pit in my stomach as I did in the darker levels of Hypnagogia (a game by the same dev). Instead, each space left me with a damp heart and a somber mind. It was only until I realized how it felt to be scared of isolation that that very feeling returned. It is a fear in itself to not want to be left alone, and to me at least, Interior Worlds expresses that amazingly. The entire experience, when I was immersed, would have been nice and comfortable if it weren't for that nagging, painful longing that was just hard to place. And now, I know what that longing is. Throughout my playthrough, the simple lack of other presences was what truly scared me, to a core I didn't know could be touched like that before. The lack of anything truly threatening allowed for that fear to blossom and never truly fade away. Never played anything like that before. 10/10.
Review 5
Purchased!
Short but mostly sweet. Interior Worlds should appeal to fans of urban exploration and/or low-key atmospheric horror games. It could have really used some more polish, in my opinion. Not being able to just walk up onto a curb and having to jump just to scale those handful of centimeters was surprising and annoying. I'm especially irritated that I did not know until I'd already played through all the regular maps, many of which are quite dark, that there had been a flashlight I missed at the start of the parking garage map. I wish I could have turned off or toned down the extremely aggressive retro dithering filter that makes everything murky and hard to see. And I don't think it was smart game design to require photographing 100% of the photographable things in each map in order to progress to the next. This meant that I couldn't focus on just enjoying the environments the way I wanted to, but kept finding myself staring at a compass and worrying over whether I was moving towards the next photo opportunity, instead of actually paying attention to the game's wonderful environments. Despite all of that the environments were still fun to explore and engage with, especially the later ones. Even if there were a lot of sources of annoyance for me, it still left an overall positive impression. I don't think this game is for everyone. But if it's at all your thing then it's hard not to appreciate this entry, rough as it is, into a very sparse genre.
Review 6
Purchased!
Deeply, primally haunting. Re-contextualizes the mystique of the unknown as an American kid in the 90s/00s. Absolutely incredible experience.
Review 7
Purchased!
This game is all about the atmosphere. Anyone seeking for the feeling of liminality - there is no better game.
Review 8
Purchased!
I'm a Taurus and I love long walks on the beach and liminal spaces.
Review 9
Purchased!
Note 1: Liminal Space type game and Exploration Note 2: Aliens Note 3: anxiety and become scarier as you keep playing Note 4 : there a FPS game at the end of the Secret Ending 2 when you complete the museum Map at the end Note 5 : dont keep playing tell it time for bed i could not sleep for 3 to 4 hours
