RUN: The world in-between

I have a soft spot for small teams making precision platformers, and RUN: The World In-Between is exactly the kind of quiet underdog I tend to champion. Team RUN built something lean and atmospheric here: a die-and-retry runner where you sprint through a purgatory-esque world, constantly being hunted by a dark shadow entity that represents your character's deepest fears. It never lets you breathe, and that pressure is the entire point. The movement toolkit is the real story. You get a horizontal dash, wall-grabs, and a wavedash mechanic that, once it clicks, starts to feel genuinely expressive. The game draws clear inspiration from Celeste and Super Meat Boy in the way each input needs to count, and for the most part the controls deliver on that promise. The patterns themselves are introduced gradually, so the difficulty curve feels managed rather than punishing from the first screen. Where critics have pushed back is on run variety: the procedural generation works by cycling a pool of hand-crafted chunks, which means after several sessions you start to recognise the building blocks. It feels less like a true roguelite and more like a shuffled campaign, and players hoping for the infinite combinatorial chaos of a Dead Cells will find that ceiling sooner than they expect. Three distinct modes give the game some structure. Classic mode asks you to fill seven orbs, with each completion layering in harder patterns and new visual themes. Speedrun mode is identical but wraps a built-in timer around the run for players who want a leaderboard to chase. Infinite mode strips away the orb structure entirely and lets any pattern appear without pause. Classic and Speedrun both offer four difficulty settings, and the top tier is genuinely mean. The gem-collection loop ties into an unlockable memories system that gestures at a narrative, though community feedback suggests the lore stays thin and players who want a story payoff will leave a little hungry. Presentation is where Team RUN clearly put their hearts. The pixel artwork by Encre Mecanique is clean and readable, using a restrained colour palette that makes dangerous tiles instantly legible even in the middle of a frantic run. The soundtrack by Thomas Barrandon runs on a shuffled playlist that loops without jarring breaks, and it does exactly what a good platformer score should do: it gets under your skin and keeps time with your pulse. There is something quietly hypnotic about the combination of driving music and the rhythm of a run you have memorised into muscle memory. The honest caveats: the procedural variety does thin out, and some players have reported the exploding-jump trigger feeling inconsistent under pressure. If you need a 20-hour content mountain or deep roguelite branching, this is not the game. But if you are after a focused, atmospheric precision runner that knows what it is and executes it with genuine craft, RUN: The World In-Between earns its runtime and then some. At roughly four to five hours for a main-story clear, it respects your time while still leaving speedrun and difficulty targets to chase.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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