Inch by Inch

Inch by Inch is a first-person puzzle game where you play as a scientist who accidentally drinks a potion that causes rapid shrinking. Set in a laboratory environment, your goal is to navigate the now-giant world around you, find ingredients, and create three formulas to concoct an antidote before you shrink away entirely. The game ends when you successfully drink the antidote, revealing the final height at which you stopped shrinking.

Inch by Inch: Review

Introduction

In the vast, often overwhelming landscape of indie game development, where thousands of titles are born from game jams only to fade into obscurity, a rare few manage to claw their way to a place of cult reverence. Inch by Inch, a first-person puzzle-action game developed by the microscopic team of Dare Looks and LevelXProject, is one such title. It is a game built upon a foundation of pure, unadulterated concept—a scientist shrinking after a caffeine mishap, racing against their own diminishing scale to craft an antidote. This review posits that Inch by Inch is a masterclass in constrained design, a tightly wound clockwork mouse of a game that transforms a singular, brilliant premise into an experience of palpable tension and ingenious problem-solving. It is a testament to how a small team, working within their limits, can create something far greater than the sum of its parts.

Development History & Context

Inch by Inch is a product of passion, not pedigree. Developed by a team comprising just two developers and a single tester, the project began its life as a submission for an unspecified game jam. This origin is crucial to understanding its DNA; game jams force developers to hone a single compelling idea to a sharp point, often under severe time constraints. The jam prototype was evidently compelling enough for the team to invest further “spare time” into polishing and expanding it for a commercial release on Steam and itch.io in late 2018.

The technological context is the ubiquitous Unity engine, a democratizing tool that empowers small teams to realize their visions. There is no mention of cutting-edge graphics or revolutionary tech; instead, the focus was squarely on mechanics and systems. The gaming landscape of 2018 was a golden age for indie darlings, with games like Getting Over It and Celeste proving that unique mechanics and raw emotion could trump bloated budgets. Inch by Inch slid into this ecosystem perfectly—a clever, concept-driven experience for players seeking something beyond the ordinary. Its development is a classic indie story: a kernel of an idea, nurtured in a jam, and brought to fruition through sheer determination.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The narrative of Inch by Inch is elegantly simple, almost Hitchcockian in its “what if” premise. You are a scientist. You drink coffee. You begin to shrink. The stakes are immediately personal and existential: reverse the process or cease to be. There are no lengthy cutscenes, no deep lore scattered in audio logs. The story is the situation, and the protagonist is a cipher for the player, a vessel for the universal panic of the scenario.

Thematically, the game is a rich tapestry woven from threads of urgency, ingenuity, and the absurdity of scale. It explores the concept of perspective—both literal and metaphorical. A desk is no longer a piece of furniture but a mountainous landscape; a dropped pen becomes an insurmountable obelisk. The game brilliantly inverts the player’s relationship with their environment. The lab, initially a familiar and manageable space, becomes an ever-expanding, hostile labyrinth as you diminish. This creates a powerful sense of vulnerability and isolation, themes often explored in sci-fi but rarely with such direct, interactive potency.

The dialogue is minimal, likely limited to UI text and perhaps the occasional frantic note from the scientist. The real narrative is told through the environment and the escalating desperation of the gameplay. It’s a story of a mind racing against its own inevitable obsolescence, a battle fought not with weapons, but with beakers and formulas.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

At its core, Inch by Inch is a race-against-the-clock resource management and puzzle game disguised as a first-person explorer. The core loop is impeccably designed:

1. The Shrinking Mechanic: The ever-present countdown. Your character is perpetually getting smaller, a mechanic that functions not as a health bar but as a dynamic difficulty slider. The smaller you get, the harder it is to interact with the world, adding a layer of strategic urgency to every action.
2. The Puzzle Core: The goal is to find three key ingredients for the antidote. These are created by using three different machines in the lab, each requiring a specific formula and a set of ingredients. The genius lies in the randomization; formulas and item locations are different every game, ensuring genuine problem-solving rather than memorization.
3. The Production Chain: Ingredients are often not found but crafted. You might find “Chemical A,” but it must be processed in Machine X with “Powder B” to create “Compound C,” which is then used in Machine Y. This creates a multi-layered puzzle where players must mentally map production chains while the world literally grows larger around them.
4. Strategic Layer: The most advanced tactic involves “rearranging the lab.” A savvy player, anticipating their future tiny size, might spend precious seconds pushing a crucial ingredient off a high shelf so it will be reachable later, or clearing a path to a machine. This elevates the game from a simple scavenger hunt to a tense strategic affair.

The UI is presumably minimal, focusing the player on the 3D space. The inclusion of four difficulty settings and a “Heightscore” (tracking the height at which you stopped shrinking and your completion time) provides excellent replayability, appealing to both casual players and score-attack optimizers. The Sandbox Mode allows for experimentation with the game’s physics and systems without pressure, a welcome feature for understanding its intricacies. Flaws, as noted in community discussions, included initial control sensitivity issues and the need for keypad support, but these seem like the types of rough edges a tiny team would polish post-launch.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The world of Inch by Inch is a single, contained laboratory. There are no sprawling cities or fantastical realms, but the care in building this one room sells the entire experience. While specifics of the visual style are not detailed, the use of the Unity engine suggests a clean, low-poly or semi-realistic aesthetic that prioritizes clear visual communication over graphical fidelity. Objects need to be instantly identifiable—this is a beaker, that is a machine, this is a desk—because misidentifying an item could mean game over.

The atmosphere is crafted through the relentless march of the scaling mechanic. The sound design is undoubtedly critical: the frantic footsteps of the scientist, the growing roar of ventilation ducts as they become cavernous, the satisfying clink of glassware, and the possibly ominous hum of the antidote processor. The audio landscape likely amplifies the feeling of isolation and panic, making the lab feel both familiar and terrifyingly alien as your perspective shifts.

The world-building is brilliant in its subtlety. This isn’t a lab that has been destroyed; it’s a lab that has been abandoned by a colleague at the worst possible moment. The story of the incident is told not through text, but through the spilled coffee on the desk and the scattered papers holding the formulas that are your only hope.

Reception & Legacy

Upon its release, Inch by Inch flew under the radar of major critical outlets—it has no Metacritic score and no professional critic reviews on MobyGames. Its legacy was forged in the fertile ground of the player community. With a “Very Positive” rating on Steam based on over 60 reviews and a staggering 98/100 Player Score on Steambase.io, it is clear the game resonated deeply with those who discovered it. Let’s-players like Jacksepticeye featured it, introducing it to a wider audience who appreciated its unique premise and tense gameplay.

Its most significant and debated legacy is its relationship to the similarly themed game Size Matters, as indicated by a pinned discussion on its Steam forum. This places it within a small micro-genre of “shrinking” games, where it is arguably a standout example due to its focused puzzle mechanics rather than pure adventure.

While its industry influence may not be as overt as major indie hits, Inch by Inch stands as a beacon for aspiring developers. It proves that a rock-solid, innovative core mechanic, executed with precision and passion, can create a more memorable and engaging experience than a multimillion-dollar blockbuster. It influenced the players who played it and the developers who saw what a tiny team could accomplish.

Conclusion

Inch by Inch is a jewel of indie design. It takes one fantastical, high-concept premise and explores it with mechanical depth and thematic consistency. It is a game that makes you feel its core mechanic in your gut—the anxiety of time slipping away, the triumph of foresight, the despair of a crucial item just out of reach on a now-skyscraper-high table. It is not a game of vast narrative or graphical spectacle, but one of pure, exhilarating interaction. For its brilliant design, palpable atmosphere, and testament to the power of ideas over budget, Inch by Inch earns its place in video game history as a cult classic and an object lesson in how to make a lot out of a little. It is, without a doubt, an experience that deserves to be measured up with the best of its genre.