limbo
i first found out about limbo because i thought its logo looked interesting. i read a little about the game and decided it sounded like something i’d enjoy. during the steam great gift pile event i traded a copy of a game i already had for limbo. later on it was included in humble indie bundle v, but i played it before getting to that bundle’s games because raptr announced rewards where people who had played enough limbo (or a number of other games i didn’t have) could get free games. i finished it quickly and it mostly exceeded my expectations.
the first thing i noticed about limbo was its visual style. everything’s black and white, with both the player and the solid environment shown in silhouette. the player also has white eyes that go black when you die. and you’ll probably die a lot, because there are gruesome hidden traps. in addition to being dark in that the colors are mostly black, limbo is also dark in the things that can happen to you if you don’t successfully avoid them. traps range from the typical falling into a pit of spikes to getting mangled by a swinging bear trap. most of the time dying wasn’t frustrating as i appreciated the complex nature of the trap i just got caught in.
from the description of the game on steam, you’re apparently looking for your sister, but there’s no mention of that in the game. you do see a girl a couple times, but there’s no indication whether the player even knows her. i think the idea is that there is a story but the game doesn’t tell it explicitly.
it doesn’t seem to require much of a story though. my own curiosity was enough motivation to figure out how to get past that next obstacle throughout the game. it helped of course that there was a good amount of variety.
it starts by dropping you right into the game with no intro and no menu. of course you can press escape to bring up the menu, and eventually i had to do that to figure out that ctrl was the action key. other than that it’s the arrow keys to move and jump, or use a controller. the main difficulty i had with the controls after discovering the action key was accidentally jumping after climbing up something, which was probably my own fault for not letting go of the up key soon enough.
the continuous level design helps to keep you playing rather than waiting to load the next level. there are chapters that can be jumped back to once reached, but you don’t notice when you’ve reached a new chapter. this keeps you immersed in the game. there’s no on-demand saving but as you’ll notice the first time you die, you always seem to come back just a little before whatever it was that stopped you. this also seems to apply to quitting the game and continuing later, so you can still make progress even if you only have a few minutes.
limbo is $10 regular price, and unless you go for the 5 or less deaths achievement you’re unlikely to spend more than 5 hours on it. if you’re at all into puzzle / platformers it’s worth $5 but its limited length makes it hard to recommend at the full price.