Last Inua

Last Inua is a 2D puzzle-platformer set in a mythologized Arctic, developed by Glowforth and released back in 2014. You play as Hiko, an Inuit hunter, accompanied by his young son Nanuq, and the two must work together to survive a frozen wilderness while something ancient and malevolent - the Tonrar, a demonic trickster spirit - stirs beneath the ice. The core mechanic is cooperative: you switch between father and son to solve environmental puzzles, with Hiko handling strength and reach while Nanuq is small enough to slip through gaps and trigger hidden paths. It is a simple system, but it mirrors the relationship at the story's center, which is a quiet, affecting choice. What Glowforth gets absolutely right is mood. The visual style leans heavily on stark contrast - pale ice fields, deep shadow, and bursts of supernatural color when the Tonrar bleeds into the world. The soundtrack is sparse and cold in the best way, using silence as punctuation rather than filling every moment with ambient noise. If you are the kind of player who sits in menus just to hear the music loop, there is something here for you. The Arctic setting is not a backdrop; it feels considered, like someone actually thought about what this place and this culture mean before choosing them as a canvas. The problems are real, though, and they explain those mixed reviews. The controls on PC feel like they were tuned for a touch interface - which they were, since Last Inua started life as a mobile title before landing on Steam. Movement can be loose and imprecise in moments that demand exactness, and the camera occasionally positions itself in ways that obscure what you actually need to see. Some puzzle solutions are opaque in a frustrating way rather than a satisfying one. For a game that runs roughly three to four hours, pacing dips in the middle act feel longer than they should. Who is this for? Honestly, it suits players who prioritize atmosphere and thematic coherence over mechanical polish. If you bounced off it expecting a tight puzzle-platformer in the Limbo or Inside lineage, the comparison was always a little unfair to both parties. Last Inua is softer, slower, more interested in the idea of a father protecting his child against forces neither of them can fully understand. The Inuit mythological framing is used with some care rather than as decoration, which is rarer than it should be in games reaching for cultural specificity. It is the kind of small project that deserved more coverage than it received at launch. I will defend the opening - it earns its patience. What I cannot fully defend is the control feel on keyboard, which is the version most PC players will default to. If you have a controller plugged in, use it from the first minute. That single adjustment smooths out a significant portion of the frustration in the reviews. Whether the whole adds up to something worth your afternoon depends on how much weight you put on visual storytelling and emotional texture versus responsive mechanics. At its best, Last Inua is a small, cold, quietly sad thing that knows exactly what it wants to be.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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