Inbetween Land Review

There's fun to be had with the latest casual adventure game from G5 Entertainment, but Inbetween Land isn't one of its strongest releases. It's a title that's squarely aimed at the most casual of gamers, with untaxing and brief gameplay to be found.

Following the exploits of a woman who seeks out her lost friend on a floating island in the sky, the story is quite a strange one, even by casual gaming standards. The main quest involves finding five crystals in order to save her. This presents itself through a mixture of fragmented object scenes, puzzles and brief point and click adventure style moments. Note: fragmented object scenes. These are slightly different from the usual hidden object events we've seen elsewhere. Fragmented means that players must find pieces of an item before putting them together in order to unlock further items, which can then be used to solve puzzles. This connection adds slightly more challenge to proceedings, although it's still quite basic stuff. Most of all, though, it does add some extra purpose to the sometimes meandering object based scenes.

Besides that, the puzzles within Inbetween Land are a little on the predictable side, favoring things such as sliding tile puzzles, pipe rotation conundrums and pattern recognition. Unusually, the first puzzle feels like one of the hardest, but after completion, it's quite smooth sailing throughout the rest of the game, although I did find later puzzles more interesting and creative. In each case, it's always possible to use the Hints button to skip a puzzle, anyhow.

I wouldn't recommend doing this as Inbetween Land is short enough, lasting, at most, three hours if not less. Given its relaxed gameplay, it's a gentle ride for casual gamers, even on the higher difficulty levels, but that may put some players off. Ultimately, the story isn't as gripping as it could be, so it's not a highlight of the genre.