Into the Belly of the Beast Review

An Unknown Quantity:

Into the Belly of the Beast surprised me when I received my review copy: I’d never heard of the title and I had no idea what to expect – the complete opposite to how I approach most games. So, after booting up the game and being greeted by the beautiful splash screen, I was quite excited to find out just what this strange little game was.

Story:

And a strange little game it is – Into the Belly of the Beast casts you in the role of a wormy, papa organism that loses his throng of wormy children to the titular beast. As any caring father would, your protective parent darts into the giant maw of the attacking underwater nasty to wriggle around its insides and reclaim your offspring.

Gameplay:

ITBOTB tasks you with traversing the gooey innards of a large blob of a beast, solve physics-based puzzles, chomp, chew and destroy any other living things you find within the monsters gut and generally be a parasitic nuisance.

Wiggling around each stage is a fairly simple affair, with the control stick offering you freedom on a two dimensional plane. Mashing the attack button gets your jaws going, and swinging round to enemies weak spots (all too often their butts) is a simple feat that will only entertain you for so long. Elsewhere there are so enjoyable puzzles that will see you clearing organs of the beast and finding more and more of your seafaring spawn.

These little guys follow you around and act as your extra lives – art-imitating-life? – and as you continue you’ll unlock new powers that open the door to smarter puzzles and trickier fights. Despite some neat ideas and a couple of interesting tricks waiting in the wings the title never grabbed me, and I plodded on carrying out the motions.