Environmental Storytelling

INSIDE by Playdead 

Inside is a game produced by PlayDead games, during this game, the Environment tells the entire story. The game takes on a puzzle style where you have to interact with the environment to progress through the game. The entire game takes place on a side scroll, where you can see things happening in the background, whilst you are in the foreground. You constantly see people interacting with stuff and it gives you a lot of information about what is happening because it is so prominent throughout the game. 

Take this screenshot for example, you are only on one plane, and you cannot move towards the camera or away from it, you can only move left or right, but there is still things which your character is looking at constantly. As well as this, you are always mainly in the dark for the most part of the game, whilst the background remains mostly in the light. I believe this is quite interesting because most games have the opposite, where your character is always in the focus of the light and the background is less clear. I feel that this was a deliberate decision on the part of the designers as it really assist the creepy tone and feel of the game. Again, there is 0 dialogue at all in the game, so the environment is constantly telling the story.