Status: Pre-Production
Inwards is an interactive virtual journey in VR through the landscape of your own unconscious. Or rather, the illusion of it. Through a carefully designed mix of interactive storytelling, psycho-magical rituals, and symbolic world-building, the experience invites players to explore inner patterns, confront hidden truths, and ultimately plant a personal intention deep within this imagined inner world. Like a dream with its own internal logic, the experience doesn’t claim to access your real unconscious, but instead offers a poetic mirror of it, strange, shifting, and meaningful in its own right.
Presented in a magically absurdist style, Inwards treats the unconscious as a kind of “magic calculator”, an invisible force guiding our daily choices. By navigating this surreal terrain, the player engages in a ritual of transformation, trusting the process to carry the planted seed of change back into waking life. It’s not therapy, but it is a practice in imagining growth, possibility, and deep inner motion.
Credits
Director and artistic lead: Steye Hallema
Lead developer: Frank Bosma
Interaction designer: Paul Staring
Producer: K.O. Productions
Selected for NewImages’ XR Development Market 2025
With the kind support of: Netherlands Film Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL
