Inside the Labs

Inside the Labs offers a blend of solo or multiplayer mutant identification and task-oriented challenges. Since I'm a fan of task-oriented challenges, survival, outsmarting monsters, and escaping scary situations, this game was perfect for me and my online community. The diverse range of challenges and random generation of item locations keep us all on our toes. This makes exploring every inch of the map a must instead of being confined to one area or section. Speaking of the maps, they are not too hard to navigate! I tend to get lost very easily, and these maps were not too hard to figure out, which is important for surviving! I appreciate that a /b tutorial /b is provided, and if read, it can help with confusion regarding tasks and occurrences during gameplay. Learning how to play the game and devising a plan on how best to complete the tasks takes time and experience, and it improves with time played. I truly enjoyed my gameplay and find it easy to get lost in leveling up and working on harder game modes as well." These adjustments help to clarify the points you're making and ensure smooth readability.

rat slop

Okay, this game DOES seem to have a lot of effort and work put into it. And it seems like a very good bang for your dollar with the low price tag, especially for a co-op game you can play with your friends. So why am I giving this game a negative review you ask? Because the game makes my GPU fans go nuts and sends my GPU to 94% to 99% GPU usage regardless of my settings. A game that looks like this should not be literally frying my GPU! I have an Nvidia 2060 RTX Super and an Intel i7 10700 @ 3.4 Ghz with 32 GB of RAM. Granted my PC is a few years old now, but it shouldn't be overheating running THIS game. I also highly recommend that the developer(s) add in a way to make the ESCAPE key actually function while in the game. I shouldn't have to Force Quit the game if I don't want to leave the laboratory and click on the tent to leave the current game. EVERY game should have an Escape function that allows you to abandon the current game and/or quit to desktop at ANY time. If the developer puts out an update to fix the ridiculous over-GPU usage, I'll be happy to try this game again and re-review it. Until then, because no $5 game is worth overheating or potentially ruining my computer, this is a "NO GO" for me. NOT RECOMMENDED ...Until the developer fixes whatever is causing GPUs to go berserk while playing this game.

Will not recommend this game i know its 4 bucks but its Janky

The game was returned, no fun with 4 players

Inside the Labs is a really fun game, lots of jump scares which I LIVE for!! I have played it solo and with a group of friends, had no issues with either! Thank you very much to the pr team on X for sending me a key so I could try it I really enjoyed it!

ghost

Let me start by saying that, for the price, I think the game is a fun enough time, especially when you recognize it's still in development and there's actively more work being done. Certain aspects of the game such as the delightfully silly Rat mechanic for downed teammates or the spooky atmosphere the game sets are spot on. It made for an overall enjoyable experience that I’m generally excited to see evolve for its eventual full release. That being said, in its current state, it only takes a couple hours to feel as though you've seen most of what the game has to offer, which is a shame when comparing it to similar games in the genre and leaves me wishing there was more to do. Unfortunately, from the moment you boot up the game, comparing it to other games is hard to avoid. In some ways this familiarity helps you feel right at home with the game and its concepts, which while good, also makes its’ currently rough edges feel a bit rougher. The roughest of these edges being the way the game plays. While the overall concept and atmosphere are fun, after hours of game play both me and my party felt as though we still didn't fully understand the controls and couldn't figure out certain gameplay elements, such as Individual Objectives. This made the experience feel a bit clunky overall and as though there was never any real chance at a “100 % Successful” mission. This was true especially for me, being a controller player, since gamepad controls have not been fully implemented yet and I had to keep swapping between mouse and controller. Ironing out these control schemes and instructions will need to be a key focus before the full release. The game also seems to struggle a bit with the variety of content it offers at the moment, however this appears to be something the Devs already plan to address with their roadmap to release. While there are a good variety of tasks to be done at each facility, they do get stale a bit too quickly for my taste due to the similar scenery and same enemy models found at all 3 locations. I think the game could seriously benefit from having more maps to choose from, or perhaps tweaking the existing ones to feel more distinct from one another a bit more. The bits of lore found on the scattered notes at all 3 locations is also an admirable attempt to deepen the lore of the world and immerse you into the game, which I do really appreciate, however it ends up falling flat in the long run when you’re playing through the same 3 maps over and over. More often than appreciating these notes, I would actively avoid them or find myself disappointed they weren’t anything relevant to completing my objectives. That all being said, the star of any horror game is the monsters, and this game has an interesting variety. I really enjoyed identifying mutants and seeing which monster would be chasing me each session, but felt as though the tactics for survival were ultimately the same no matter what: Run, and Hide in a locker. I can’t help but feel like the game would improve from making these mutant types more unique to involve more strategy with how you handle each and survive. I’d also like to see an improvement on the shuffle algorithm of the mutant types you're facing. Perhaps it was pure bad luck, or even a glitch, but in my playthrough I only ever encountered about 3 of the mutant varieties, although it was hard to tell the difference many times. Ultimately, I think Inside the Labs proves to be a decently fun time on a budget. While at the moment it falls a bit short of its competition, the low price tag and the promise of constant improvements and updates leading up to the full release make it at least worth a try if you’re a fan of multiplayer horror games. As for me personally, I’m more so excited to see what the game will become closer to release. Thank you to Chereseeba games for the review copy!