It’s hard to judge a wonderful, mind-blowing game accurately when you’re relishing its afterglow. Recency bias kicks in: You forget how much you’ve loved other games, you ignore shortcomings, you don’t judge in a rational way.

Be that as it may: “Inside,’’ a game for Windows and XBox One, which I just completed as I’m typing this, is one of the most spectacular experiences I’ve had as a gamer. It pushes the genre of the sidescrolling action/adventure game well beyond its boundaries. It features a bizarre, unsettling story, its visuals are astounding, and its puzzle elements are crisp. It’s a short, hugely satisfying game that does absolutely everything right.

“Inside’’ was created by Playdead, a Danish studio best known for the blockbuster 2010 game “Limbo.’’ “Limbo’’ won plaudits for taking the ancient-at-this-point sidescrolling genre and injecting new life into it with a dark, minimalist experience that carried some extremely gothic overtones. You played as a helpless little boy who was murdered over and over by spiders and spikes and just about every other conceivable danger. The monochrome palette was striking and helped the game get under your skin.

“Inside,’’ on the other hand, is a . . . well, sidescrolling platform game in which you play a little boy who dies a lot, and in which there are a lot of black and white visuals. Creating a game that is so conceptually similar doesn’t sound like a recipe for success, but Playdead nails it.

The game starts with your character alone in the woods. Quickly, you realize that while your character can only move left or right, the game world exists in three dimensions, and you need to pay attention to the background: When you’re caught in a car’s headlight, a masked man gets out, chases you down, and starts to strangle you, causing you to restart at the nearest checkpoint. (“Inside’’ is very generous with checkpoints, as it should be given how frequently it kills you.)

There’s really no way to say more without giving away too much. Soon, things zoom out a bit — it becomes clear something has gone very wrong, if the piles of dead pigs are any indication. There are monsters, cavernous facilities, and a series of puzzles (which I didn’t find to be too challenging). As the game progresses, things get weirder and weirder and weirder until a climax that . . . let’s just say I didn’t see it coming.

“Limbo’’ featured a little boy in what felt like a big, imposing world, and there’s certainly some of that in “Inside.’’ The difference is that the feel of “Inside’’ ranges from the intimate — you’re alone in a flooded chamber with a hideous thing trying to get you — to the epic: moments when the game hints to you, in various clever ways, that maybe your journey is part of something bigger, that maybe more is at stake here than just your own survival.

The animations are incredible. From the boy stumbling after jumping from a ledge, to dogs charging at him viciously, to strange zombiesque creatures lurching about, there is such an insane amount of polish on display. The backgrounds are rich and detailed and evocative, the camera panning in subtle ways to show you more of it when something interesting is afoot. We don’t usually think of 2-D sidescrollers as the most immersive genre, but this game really did take me somewhere else (it was a short trip, though — a dedicated player could probably get through in two or three sessions).

I can’t recommend “Inside’’ enough. It did things to my brain no other game has ever done. It’s a remarkable achievement.

Jesse Singal can be reached at jesse.r.singal@gmail.com.