Limbo

 
Developer: Playdead
Steam Release: Aug 2011
Hours Played: 9.1
Similar To: Black The Fall / Deadlight / Inside / Little Nightmares / Toby: Secret Mine
Rating: 5/5 Parsnips



GAMEPLAY
This highly acclaimed platform puzzler will need little introduction because if you're into indie platformers, you've played it already. It combines everything that is good about classic platform puzzling, sharpens it all up and delivers a package that will totally immerse you inside its hypnotic world. You control a silhouetted little boy all alone in a sinister and hostile land. The landscape includes a misty wood and a lethal industrial environment of warehouses and factories equipped with heavy-duty mechanical equipment designed to kill you at every turn. The game moves you along screen by screen and although unforgiving, in that death is brutal and comes often, you are reincarnated immediately at very convenient and regular checkpoints. 


BALANCE & PACE
The great advantage to this is that you'll never feel angry that you'll have to redo large sections of the game again. Movement, consisting of your usual left, right, jump and climb (with various pushing, pulling and pressing actions), is smooth and responsive with your character having a pleasant bounce in his step. The real beauty of Limbo lies in its ingenious level designs. The conundrums are extremely well-thought through and follow inventive and intricate logical patterns with increasingly unusual mechanics ushered in as you play. The cringe-inducing leeches that attach themselves to your head making you move in one direction and the gravity inversion mechanics later on, really make you feel you're playing a masterpiece and not a run-of-the-mill puzzler.


PRESENTATION & DESIGN
The colour scheme is mainly black with shades of grey and a constant mist or fog emanating from the depths. This helps to create the eerie and creepy atmosphere intended. In the sound department, we have subtle music consisting of long, lingering notes that you hardly notice but which again helps to create that stark but unsettling vibe. Sound effects are effectively done with every sound accounted for: the boy's footsteps are distinctly heard; water drips and splashes as it should; flies buzz irritatingly; wind rustles delicately and machines crackle and whirr menacingly. Menus screens - which the game keeps to a minimum - are stark and very simple. 



PROGRESS SYSTEM
Limbo is purely all about puzzling out how to get from A to B. There are no stars or dots to collect, no time-pressure to worry about and certainly no score to fret over. As such, there are no stats. The game does, however, save chapters as you progress through the game and these can be accessed, as you complete them, by clicking on the Load Chapter screen in the main menu. Here you may scroll through each chapter, represented by a screenshot and indicated chronologically by one of 39 small squares appearing along the top of this screen.

CONCLUSION
Limbo is the thinking-man's platform-puzzler done at its best. Helped by its intelligent level design, it combines classic puzzle-solving with unique and groundbreaking mechanics that will put the player in that sweet-spot for much of the game. Personally, I was stumped about 3 or 4 times and did have to peek at the YouTube walkthrough to get past those moments. I also found a few parts to be a little frustrating. However, I always knew that I could overcome the challenge and eventually complete the game... and I am very pleased that I did too.