Outside In: The Ultimate Friendship Test is a new Steam game that was developed by a team of independent game designers from Hanoi. The challenging game revolves around a war against a deadly virus. Playing the game, friends can gauge their compatibility by getting through the challenges together.

In Outside In, the mission is to save Mimi the cat from attacks by virus variants inside her body. Two players are required, one will be Doctor Henry, who is in charge of making the vaccine and leading the fellow teammate. Meanwhile, the other player will play the role of Blaze, Henry’s son, who will be shrunk into the size of a virus and enter Mimi’s body to fight the disease. Blaze is also responsible for identifying and describing the virus' appearance to his father in order to create the correct vaccine. 

Outside In is a product of Together Games Studio, a team of four Vietnamese developers from Hanoi. The game was released on Steam in March and has already received a lot of positive feedback from gamers all around the world.

Recently, Together Game Studio donated the entire profit of the second half of May to the Vietnamese Fatherland Front in order to support the fight against COVID-19.

Outside In utilized a design technique called toon-shading, a simple shading style that resembles the 2D cartoon movies from the last decade. The design gives players a sense of familiarity and can run on machines with low specs. Up until now, this made-in-Vietnam game has been very well-received, with 90% of users on Steam leaving a positive review.

Though the storyline may be simple, the real challenge of this game lies in the communication between both players. The teammates must work in sync to deliver information and crack the code efficiently while under time pressure. In the game's description on Steam, Outside In is described as “a game created to test friendships. The line between 'together forever' and 'we don’t belong together' will never feel so thin!”

After every level, players will be able to rate their partner’s effort. Throughout the levels, difficult time challenges might make it hard for friend pairs to keep their cool. You can download Outside In as Early Access for a price of VND70,000. The game is still at the development stage and will soon be completed in the future.

[Images via Outside Inon Steam]