INSIDE by Playdead: A Visual Analysis

I love Playdead’s INSIDE, and I will find any excuse to play it. When I was tasked with playing a game with a visual composition lens, I immediately redownloaded INSIDE. I was excited to explore the world again with a fresh set of eyes.

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How Celeste Pulled Me Out of the Mud

When I first downloaded Celeste to my Nintendo Switch, I was in one of the scariest times of my life. I was a recent grad working at GameStop studying for the GRE, unsure of the next few years of my life. Would I still be struggling to break in to the games industry? Would I be accepted to the Entertainment Technology Center? It was an anxiety-plagued time in my life filled with sleepless nights, unnecessary nights out drinking, and difficult conversations about my future with my parents. I felt like I was sitting in a pile of mud that made it difficult to stand up straight. My anxiety was piled on when I began feeling ill. I rarely get sick, so when it happens, it feels like death. I laid in bed anxious, dazed, and worried about my future. In an attempt to make myself feel better, I put on the weekly episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast. One of the members of the podcast said, “Get off your ass and start playing Celeste,” and it spoke to me in a deeper way than he intended. I stood up straight for the first time in a month, pushed through the body aches and walked over to my Switch, and played the purest, most emotional platformer of my life. In short, Celeste and its mystical mountain are a metaphor for overcoming anxiety and depression. This game could not have impacted me at a more perfect time. By the end of Celeste’s emotional experience, I was in tears, ready to take on the rest of my life.

The bulk of Celeste was made by the six people at “Matt Makes Games”, an indie studio known for its fast-paced platformers and gorgeous art. Celeste was marketed simply as a platformer, with the metaphors of anxiety and depression it speaks about hidden from the consumer. Even podcasters were keeping the secret, urging folks to experience the storytelling for themselves. I downloaded the game with no prior knowledge of its release. Even working at GameStop, no one I knew was talking about it. I had no idea why this game was speaking to me, but I was allowing my gut feelings to take over.

Upon booting up Celeste, a few screens with text pierced right through me.

“This is it, Madeline. Just breathe. Why are you so nervous?”

 I was immediately placed into the shoes of the red-haired pixel character on screen, because I too was hitting a point where breathing and reassuring myself was the best way to ease my nerves. I was taught how to jump across a pit and climb walls, by a mystical crow, then traversed over to an old lady that warned me of Celeste Mountain’s spectacular power.

“You might see things. Things you ain’t ready to see,” she said. Her words would begin foreshadowing the metaphor for the mountain: It will reveal Madeline’s anxiety to her, regardless of if she is ready to cope with it or not. She calls the old woman crazy and moves up the mountain. As she crosses a stone bridge, it begins to break behind her. A gap in the bridge forces her to jump, and as she prepares her landing, the bridge collapses under her. She plummets to her death.

Time freezes.

Just before hitting rock-bottom in her life, Madeline is taught by the magical crow that she can “Dash”. In doing so, Madeline saves herself and begins the long journey up the mountain, determined to complete the climb.

“You can do this,” the screen says. By now, Madeline and I were connected. We were both on the same journey of learning how to cope with our anxiety.

Now that I knew how to dash, no platform or cliff felt too high up. Madeline and her new dash ability felt fluid and engaging. By deciding against a User Interface, the team at Matt Makes Games was able to use the pixel art as both form and function. When Madeline can dash, her hair blows red in the wind. When Madeline has used her dash, her hair turns blue. Her red hair and dash ability will not return until she has safely grounded herself. From screen to screen in the first level alone, Celeste’s difficulty ramps up in a way that makes the player feel powerful. The platforming goes from simple linear traversal to angled traversal requiring a mix of wall jumping and dashing in the first few screens. As soon as the player feels powerful and confident with the mechanics, Celeste Mountain throws in a new way of thinking about traversal. For example, a new way of thinking is introduced in the form of a green crystal, that, when collected, recharges Madeline’s dash mechanic in midair.

After completing the first phase of her climb, Madeline has a dream. The player is treated to a dreamy soundtrack, and takes control of Madeline while in said dream. She finds a mirror, and out pops a purple, oozing version of Madeline. It introduces itself as a part of her personality (I now believe it to be a representation of the negative energy in her life), and becomes the first “Boss” the player encounters. Because the only mechanics in the game are jump, dash, and climb, the harder boss levels are essentially speed run levels. They require the player to platform away from the boss, who chases them at an increasing speed. The speedy platforming requires plenty of tries. In my first play through of the first boss level, I was introduced to yet another metaphor planted in by the developers: Assist Mode.

Assist mode is accessible from the very beginning of the game. Before giving you the ability to turn the mode on, the developers say through text that difficulty is a crucial part of Celeste’s experience. It hints at the fact that Madeline’s journey to the summit of the mountain will not be easy. The developers go on to explain that they highly recommend playing the game in full without Assist Mode turned on, but that they realize every player is in different stages of their life. I believe that the developers mostly just want everyone to enjoy Celeste in its entirety, so they included Assist Mode as an alternative to anyone that felt too stressed at any point in the game. 

Upon escaping the purple metaphor for her negative traits, Madeline hears a pay phone ring. She gets a call from “someone she hasn’t heard from in ages” and subsequently gets eaten by the phone, waking her from the dream. Madeline retraces the steps she took in her dream, but this time conscience and without the purple figure chasing after her. She sees the same payphone in her dream, and calls her mother for the first time in weeks.

As hard as it was for me to admit, I personally felt like I hadn’t spoken to my own mother in weeks as well. When we did speak, it was either me raising my tone with her about my uncertainties in life, or her desperately trying to help me wade out of the funk I had found myself in. When Madeline called her mother in the middle of a dangerous climb, I too felt the urge to reach out. I called out for my mom to help me feel better, and she responded by holding me and keeping me on track with my cold medicine. Her presence was a wake-up call for me, much like Madeline’s dream.

The next few levels do an astounding job at reminding you that you’re powerful. Elements introduced previously are now being combined in an effort to make the player feel powerful. Though the team at “Matt Makes Games” never explicitly says it, this way of teaching and melding mechanics is a way of saying, “Take baby steps, and you’ll reach the summit.” Baby steps can be in the literal sense of platforming, but I also took it as a metaphor for learning to cope with your surroundings. 

As Madeline continues her climb, her red-eyed, purple-skinned persona keeps returning. It disrupts her conversations, it discourages her from continuing the climb, and it haunts her through her journey. She meets characters along the way that are on the mountain for different reasons. Theo, a millennial in between jobs, is trying to figure out if photography is a career-worthy passion or not. Mr. Oshiro, a phantom that haunts an abandoned hotel, represents someone that has let their guilt and fear take over their life. As Madeline learns new ways of coming to terms with her purple persona, she learns how to cope with her negativity from the people around her.

The most effective technique she learns later becomes a mechanic near the top of the mountain. At the plot’s climax, Madeline and Theo are riding a gondola to the summit. The purple figure returns and begins to shake the gondola in an effort to stop Madeline from progressing forward. Madeline begins to scream and prepares for the plummet to her death. Theo teaches her a meditative technique where she imagines that her breath is holding a feather afloat in her chest, and they survive the gondola ride. That night, in another dream, Madeline confronts the part of her that has been trying to stop her from climbing. The purple fiend retaliates by throwing her off the edge of the mountain, and the player is introduced to a “Feather” power up that gives Madeline the ability of flight.

After utilizing her new technique, Madeline once again confronts her fears. She now understands that this part of her is a manifestation of all of the negative traits of her personality, and Madeline struggles to calm down the red-eyed expression. In a final effort, she admits that she loves that part of herself, and the two finally come together as one. Madeline allows the manifestation to join her again, and she gains the ability to Dash a second time in the air. Madeline is the same person, but now the part of her is encouraging and helpful in the final climb to the summit. On the way back down the mountain, Celeste proves that the accomplishment to the summit was just the beginning, and that feeling like a new person on the way down is just as challenging and powerful as the climb up.

Upon completing the climb, I took the game’s advice and began to meditate. It helped me realize that in reality, my negativities were just me confused with my future. I began to love my life again, excited about the future that may be. I received an acceptance letter from Carnegie Mellon University weeks later, and I realized that it was merely the summit. The trek back down the mountain would be my time at the ETC, and a better understanding of myself as a person was crucial to my success in the program.

Celeste is filled to the brim with metaphors of meditation and learning to love one’s self. It is a transformational game as much as it is a humbling platformer. At a time when I felt like standing up straight was a challenge in and of itself, it taught me how to climb a mountain of fear and anxiety by taking baby steps, understanding what I had learned about myself in the past, and learning to accept my prior negativities. But then, it taught me that the summit was just the beginning. As a new person with a better understanding of myself, I am able to come down the mountain with a new set of eyes on the constantly changing world around me. Celeste is the perfect balance between intricate platformer and accessible transformational game, and it’s one I will always describe as an epitome of game design.

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West Coast Trip

1/5 (12:57 AM)

I just flew in from Denver for Christmas break. I watched Into the Spider-Verse 3 times. Once with my girlfriend, once alone, and once with my family. It felt right, and it felt necessary. It’s a spectacular film with intricately detailed animation. Each frame feels like a panel of a comic. It’s oddly satisfying, like butter on warm toast but for your eyes, and it never lets up. Every 30 seconds there’s a tiny mark in the background that adds the extra shine needed for it to feel like a comic book. It never ceased to surprise me in terms of swag. Spider-Verse was the perfect gateway drug back into Insomniac’s Marvel Spider-Man every night that I could. But more on that in my review, here. 

Besides that, after watching Girlfriend Reviews on YouTube, I was able to convince my girlfriend, Alison, to start a new save in Breath of the Wild. In her doing so, I was able to retrace my thought process with every new piece of the world she interacted with. The old man on the edge of the cliff was the perfect chaperone into the world. He engaged her curiosity and asked if she wanted to know more about the wilds. It was fascinating to replay the game with this new set of eyes. In just 20 minutes she went from, “Noooooooo, fighting those things is annoying,” referencing a Bokoblin camp, to, “Get back here, you!” when a Hopper was too quick for her reflexes.

 1/6 (11:21 PM)

My most successful Disneyland trip yet is all thanks to my willingness to tap back into my childhood memories and lack of a visit since then. Reentering the park for the first time made me giddy with excitement, and I immediately made a run to California Adventure. I never got to go as a kid, so seeing Pixar Pier for the first time felt natural. Why wouldn’t Disney give Pixar their much-deserved attention and love?

Because of the Disneyland app and my willingness to splurge on the $15 MaxPass, I only had to wait in a normal line twice (Indiana Jones and Haunted Mansion) and those were each only 30 minute wait times. For the other dozen or so rides, I was using and abusing my MaxPass privileges. It felt like the walks across the parks took linger than the wait times themselves. Whether the spectacular theming in the lines, or just the sheer lack of people behind the FastPass entrances are to blame, my time at Disneyland felt breezy and efficient.

Incredicoaster was a great, tight coaster with solid drops and turns that gave me enjoyable butterflies. It was my first and second-to-last attraction. At night, all of Disney Pier was lit up, so the Ferris wheel gave me heavy Santa Monica peer vibes (great for tourism). We then jumped to the Guardians of the Galaxy/Tower of Terror ride. This ride was special because I had never gone on the original Tower of Terror attraction before its reskin, so I had no idea what I was getting into. I expected one large drop like most tall tower rides at amusement parks, so when the doors would open to a screen of Chris Pratt doing his Star-Lord thing, or Baby Groot doing his Baby Groot thing, I kept assuming the ride was over. I screamed every time it dropped, and I was having an absolute blast:

Front row, white shirt. I promise I’m enjoying myself.

Star Tours and Buzz Lightyear ended up letting me down after the excitement that Guardians of the Galaxy brought me. I was having trouble with accuracy in Buzz Lightyear’s shooting gallery, and Star Tours felt like the old Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios (it is now defunct) which, at the time, was at least decently engaging. I slightly blame it on Kashyyyk, because Coruscant easily outshined it.

Then, it was time to hit up the classics. My Disneyland memories mostly consists of Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, and Haunted Mansion, so riding all three of them in succession was a trip down memory lane. To my surprise, these attractions have aged pretty well. I’m very sad to see the three door selection in Indiana Jones go, but the rest of the ride was still entertaining. Seeing Haunted Mansion with a layer of The Nightmare Before Christmas was impressive and fit well, but it just made me miss the classic ride even more when the final part of the coaster just turned me into a gingerbread man instead of a ghostly figure.

It is very easy for me to admit the highlight of my Disneyland trip. Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire at The Void is one of the most jaw-dropping experiences I’ve ever had. Within seconds of transforming into Stormtroopers our group of 4 turned into a pack of screaming boys. We were all in formation when the Empire was onto our plan, and when one of us would get shot, we could hear the terror through the intercoms. It’s everything I’ve hoped for in VR, and I’m glad to see Disney and The Void push VR as a medium into new forms with their dedicated venues.

We ended our trip with Toy Story Mania. It was a great end to my ETC-driven Disneyland trip because of Jesse Schell’s involvement in the attraction. Hearing him discuss some of his design challenges in class, then being able to enjoy the attraction as a Game Designer was intriguing. The game itself is satisfying throughout, and the lines theming made me feel like a kid opening a new toy on Christmas.

Overall, this was my most enjoyable Disneyland trip yet. Between the almost perfect weather (it sometimes got a little too chilly) and the sheer volume of attraction I got to experience, I can’t help but be excited for the rest of the West Coast Trip, and get to the important stuff: site visits.

1/9 (12:53 AM)

From Walt Disney Imagineering to Scopely, I’ve had the privilege of visiting a wide variety of design studios these past two days, and it’s not over yet.

WDI knew exactly who we were, what we were doing there, and the best way for us to be able to communicate with those in our fields of interest. It was the only location that every class member visited, because Imagineering has such a wide variety of roles. It was interesting to hear about the Game Design Internship they opened up from an ETC alum herself, because she was worried for her future. Disney didn’t have a proper “Game Designer” role for her, so she was unsure of her plans after it. Definitely something to keep thinking about.

The Activision Motion Capture studio was definitely a fan-boy geek-out moment for me. The tour felt geared more towards potential technical artists or riggers, but I still enjoyed the hell out of seeing a large mo-cap studio like that in person.

While at Ready at Dawn, I felt connected to the employees. The studio felt authentic and down-to-earth. It was great to hear the authenticity and passion in their voices when they talked about their work. Now when is Daxter 2 coming?

Scopely considered themselves as much a tech start-up as a game studio, so the tour seemingly showed off more about the space itself than the employees. It reminded me of the ETC in some ways, and I enjoyed it.

Tonight, we had an alumni dinner that opened my eyes to how real our connections were. The ETC has alumni across the board in all types of industry roles, and it was great to see them interact and joke with each other.

And now, in giddy preparation for the Naughty Dog tour, I’m rewatching Grounded: Making The Last of Us. Tomorrow morning, I’ll listen to Cory Barlog’s GameOverGreggy show guest appearance in giddy preparation for Santa Monica Studio. Not even two years ago, I never thought I’d be able to tour either of these studios, and now thanks to the ETC I get to visit BOTH IN ONE DAY.

1/9 (9:46 PM)

Naughty Dog was dark and chilly, but I could feel the warmth through the people there that enjoyed their work. Kareem is definitely someone to keep in touch with, and his advice to be willing and ready to talk face-to-face with someone seemed crucial to his success at the studio.

Neil was calm and collected as I expected, and he’s definitely someone I aspire to learn from. He stated that soft skills and people skills would be important at the studio, especially since the flat structure encouraged communication at the studio.

It was great visiting Santa Monica Studio immediately after Naughty Dog, because I definitely felt different “vibes” (for lack of a better word) from both. Santa Monica still had a fair number of employees on break, so that probably influenced that feeling. It felt a little more rigid and separated. When we went to the balcony overlooking about half the studio, I felt disconnected from the people below me. Naughty Dog, on the other hand, was one giant circle where one could easily cut through to talk to someone on the other side. Either way, both studios were incredibly eye-opening, and visiting both in one day was a dream I never thought I’d be able to experience until now.

1/10 (5:09 PM)

Today I experienced an incredible sense of purpose and passion from Tangible Play (the folks behind the groundbreaking educational games known as Osmo). I very quickly realized how much I would love a place like Osmo relatively soon. I asked a panel of ETC alumni if they would ever consider increasing their targeted demographic from kinds to teens, and the response gave me a sense of “maybe… if the right idea came along”. This got me very excited to stay in touch with the alumni at Osmo.

EA was interesting until I realized that they didn't want to show us any offices. The gyms, cafés, awards, and statues are interesting, though.