"Limbo is a puzzle-platform video game developed by independent studio Playdead. The game was released in July 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade, and has since been ported to several other systems, including the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows. Limbo is a 2D sidescroller, incorporating a physics system that governs environmental objects and the player character. The player guides an unnamed boy through dangerous environments and traps as he searches for his sister."
- Wikipedia on LIMBO
What do I expect from the game?
LIMBO is a game that its almost impossible not to have heard of if you have any interest in gaming or game design. I have heard a lot about the game from various sources, and the name has cropped up a lot during my research into atmosphere in games, so I have been wanting to play it for a while. It is no doubt a hugely successful indie game. I've seen quite a bit of gameplay footage, so I am interested to experience the visuals and atmosphere for myself, and also to see exactly how it feels to play the game.
I expect that the game's strongest features will be its unique visual style, which consists of black-and-white tones and a simplistic approach. LIMBO is often cited as being an example of "games as art", so I will be paying close attention to the visuals and themes to see if I agree with this view. I expect that the atmosphere will be another strong feature. Of course, atmosphere in games is the focus of my MA research, so I will be look at how the different elements of the audio-visual experience are used to create atmosphere.
When it comes to gameplay, I am much less sure of what to expect because I've never played it before! I expect that due to limitations with the silhouette/black-and-white visuals, the gameplay might have to be quite simple - there's only so much one can do with silhouettes in terms of creating interactions, e.g, colours can't be used as a feature of the mechanics. I have heard that it is quite a difficult game and the player should expect to fail often. I've also heard that the game is quite short. I am interested to jump in and see if what I have heard about LIMBO is correct!
First Impressions - What do I think of the game in its first few minutes?
Upon launching the game, LIMBO greets the player with a simple start screen, bearing the game's title. The screen prompts the player to press any key, then the gameplay begins immediately. The player character - an un-named boy - lies on the floor of a forest. Pressing the movement keys opens his eyes, which light up in the darkness, and he stands up. The player receives no instructions of any kind. Of course, as is almost universally the case in side scroller, the player must go right - however, I began by going left instead because there's usually something hidden just to the left of the start point in side scrollers, and LIMBO is no exception - I found some kind of egg-like object, cracked it, and gained a Steam achievement. Then I set off to the right of the screen.
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| First view of the game world. |
The player begins to be faced with challenges and interactions quickly and steadily in the early moments of the game. In the game's first chapter, the player soon learns how to move around, jump and interact by having to traverse a spike-pit, solve a couple of simple puzzles and climb a rope. The simplicity of both the game's visuals and the gameplay itself are immediately apparent at the start of the game. The complete lack of instruction is perhaps a questionable design choice. The controls are very simple indeed (see the control screen below), but I still had to check the control screen to learn that interactions are performed by pressing the Alt key. Alt seems like a strange key choice for interactions. Met with the first obstacle that needed to be interacted with, I tried clicking both mouse buttons, space, enter and several letter keys before giving up guessing and checking the controls. This broke my immersion, and could have been avoided by the simple addition of some on-screen instructions.
The game's atmosphere is clear and strong from the start. The audio and visuals are minimal, but unique and striking. At the beginning of the game, the player is given no information about the world that they are exploring, the character they are controlling, or the reasons behind their actions. This, combined with the silhouette art style, gives an impression of not seeing the full picture, which triggered a natural curiosity within me. However, the game's eerie music, hard-to-see dangers and almost film-noir style also made the game feel instantly unnerving. The interesting mixture of emotions that LIMBO creates drew me into the game quickly and completely.
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| The first puzzle/interactive object in the game. |
The game's earliest puzzles are simple but imaginative and varied. The early puzzles are obviously quite easy, but they are not boring because they are quite creative. Some examples of early puzzles include rowing a boat across a pond, then dragging it out the water so you can stand on it and reach an otherwise-unreachable platform.
The game's dark side soon begins to creep in, with an unidentified object - presumably some kind of body - hanging from a tree and attracting flies that appears early in the game. The dark side also comes through in the player-characters death animations. The un opening few minutes of the game effectively set the scene for what the game is about and how it
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| The ominous hanging object is one of the first hints of the game's dark themes. |
What do I like about the game?
LIMBO is a game of many well thought-out and well-designed features which combine to create a unique experience that grabbed my attention. The most immediate positive feature is the visuals and atmosphere. This is what the player experiences first, and the game's aesthetic and mood overarches the experience as a whole. The visuals are also probably the game's biggest unique selling point, and it works to the game's advantage that the visuals are so striking, because it will get player's talking and facilitate word-of-mouth exposure for the game. As an indie developer, exposure is crucial to a game's success.
LIMBO is a veritable masterclass in simplicity. The game's visuals are of course a major example of simplicity, but this simplicity is also carried over into other elements, such as the gameplay, narrative and UI. There's something about the lack of story and visual information that makes the game feel uncluttered and not distracting, and therefore easier to take in. Seeing environments, objects and characters only in silhouette gives the player an enhanced sense of space and their surroundings, while the game's physics system means that every object in the environment moves and reacts to input accurately. This adds a sense of realism and control over the surroundings. Though the game takes place in a 2D plane, there are different layers of level art in the foreground and background which add a sense of depth to the game environments. Also, the camera acts dynamically as the player moves through the game world; zooming in and out, panning left and right and blurring the foreground so that each shot is framed effectively, which has a surprising amount of power over the mood of each section.
The subdued visuals allow the quality of the gameplay and audio (two very strong features of the game) to shine through. The audio is similarly minimalistic, but very effective and atmospheric. There is not much music to speak of, only a more ambient, vaguely-musical backdrop. This works to the game's favour as it serves to set a mood of unease without distracting the player or trivialising the experience. Sound effects, meanwhile, make up the majority of the game's soundscape - and they do a good job of it, too. The lack of complicated visual information means that the game has to rely more heavily on sound effect to set the scene, and it achieves this beautifully. Each sound effect is of very high quality and clearly communicates what is happening. The sound effects definitely boost the game's atmosphere massively.
The game's atmosphere is another strong suit, and I can now tell exactly why LIMBO's name comes up so much when researching the subject of game atmosphere. The game's atmosphere finds itself at a rare crossroads of simplicity, unease, bleakness and innocence. The minimal visuals, detailed audio, interesting world and well-balanced gameplay all help the game's atmosphere to soar. The consistency of the game's aesthetic (both in-game and in the UI) helps to tie the atmosphere together. The player will occasionally run into other human characters, who are often hostile. During the first half of the game, the player is pursued by a giant spider. These sections of the game really inject a sense of peril and fear (especially for arachnophobes like myself!)
The gameplay and puzzles are consistently well-designed. The puzzles are only ever of a small scale, and are mostly quite easy to figure out. This means that the player is not left struggling for long periods of time in one area, thus halting progression. The game feels nicely paced because you're never in one section for too long, thus you always feel like you are getting somewhere. There is also a very welcome lack of backtracking and repetition, which are problems that puzzle games often suffer from. The puzzles are also varied, and the game always seems to have new tricks up its sleeve with which to challenge and entertain the player. Puzzles generally involve a handful of set actions, such as moving objects, interacting with levers to change things within the environment, avoiding dangers and so on, but there is definitely sufficient variety to how the designers use the puzzle-building tools at their disposal. The player will find themselves dying a lot in this world, often due to hidden dangers that are often surprising and unavoidable. This both adds challenge and keeps the player guessing about everything in their path.
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| Danger is everywhere in the world of LIMBO. |
The player-character, an unnamed boy, suffers some rather gruesome deaths, from falling in spike pits, to drowning, to being impaled by the giant spider. The gruesome deaths add personality to the game and the setting, giving the environment a bleak and unforgiving vibe, while not being too graphic because the character is simply a silhouette. The game has a wistfully dark mood that radiates from every element. This helps to make the experience of LIMBO stand out and stick in the player's memory.
What do I not like?
LIMBO undoubtedly has many positive points, but I have identified one problem with it. That problem is that the story is almost never divulged to the player. Had I not read a bit about the game's plot before playing it, I wouldn't have had any idea who my character was, where I was, or why I should care about progressing through the game. This could have affected my enjoyment of the game as it played out, and I may have gotten bored without any story motivating me to continue. The game should really have offered some subtle narrative details at the start, and every-so-often thereafter, so that the story unfolded more noticeably as the game continued.
At the time of the game's launch, some critics and players raised concerns over the length of the game in proportion to it's price. Some people thought that it wasn't long enough to warrant its price tag of $15/15 euros. Now, I feel like I am exempt from this concern for two reasons, firstly, I didn't pay full price for the game (I got it for about £2), and I haven't finished it to fully appreciate it's length (I got about halfway through in 2-3 hours). But I can see how this could have been an issue at the game's launch, especially with it being an indie game, which are inherently risky ventures.
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| The chapter select screen. |
The lack of proper introduction to the controls was also a minor issue. Had there been some in-game prompts showing the controls at the very start of the game, the player could pick up the controls instantly and not have to check the controls page like I did. It's only a really small interruption, of course, but it could have helped the start of the game to be more streamlined.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I think that LIMBO is a very strong and unique indie game that has some valuable unique selling points, namely the minimalistic visuals, strong atmosphere and creative puzzles. LIMBO is unlike any other game I have experienced. It lacks so many classic game elements and systems, like scores, different game modes, character interaction and unlockables, but it doesn't seem to suffer at all from the lack of any of this. In fact, LIMBO might even be better off without them. I can definitely see how one might argue that LIMBO is an example of "games as art". Though for me, I found that it was hampered slightly by the lack of narrative. Having a more fleshed-out narrative could have helped the game be even more engrossing and artistic. I suppose this could have undermined the designers vision for the game though.
I am glad to have finally played LIMBO, having heard so much about it before today. As it is such a unique beast, it has been hard to digest it all in one sitting. I'm halfway through now so I will likely finish it off in the next few days and study it some more!
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