Limbo (2010)

This title is a strikingly atmospheric puzzle-platformer that stands out for its minimalist, monochromatic art style and haunting audio design. You play as a young boy venturing through a dark, foreboding world in search of his sister, encountering deadly traps, eerie creatures, and cleverly designed physics-based puzzles along the way. The game’s simplicity is its strength, every visual and sound element adds to a pervasive sense of tension and unease, making each step feel suspenseful.

However, Limbo’s minimalism can also be a drawback, the story is intentionally vague, leaving much to the player’s interpretation, which may feel unsatisfying to some, fortunately for me I enjoy this kind of story-telling, but I know this is not for everybody, some people like to have all the facts shown as they are, but I face these interpretative stories as interactive ones, which you enjoy post-game when engaging with the game's community.

The puzzles, while creative, can occasionally become repetitive, and the game’s short length means the experience ends before you might fully want it to. Despite these minor flaws, Limbo remains a memorable, emotionally resonant experience, proving that atmosphere and design can be just as powerful as complex narratives or flashy mechanics. This is one of the best indie game that I have played, and I highly recommend it if you like puzzle, interpretative stories and the dark aesthetic.

Beautiful looking platform adventure puzzler from the people who brought us Inside. The atmosphere is tight and it feels like you're escaping horrors in your dreams. Areas are well thought out and the controls just feels great and responsive, and the puzzles had me engaged all the way to the end. Highly recommend this if you're into smaller indie titles.

[3.8] / [5]

Pros

• Art style
• Interesting puzzles

Cons

• Implicit storytelling

I love the art style of Limbo. It’s monochromatic but the lighting and different depth of focus paints a dream-like details rich world. The puzzles are interesting and well paced. New mechanics are introduced steadily as the game progresses to keep the puzzles engaging. I enjoyed the few puzzles that appeared to be unsolvable at first but were eventually solved after many trials and thinkings. It makes me feel really smart.

I played INSIDE before playing Limbo. Both games try to tell a story through the environment and puzzles. The implicit storytelling elevate these two games beyond just beautiful platforming puzzle games. However, I do find the implicit storytelling in Limbo too implicit. It’s hard to get hints of what is going on. INSIDE does a much better job in that.

All in all, I enjoyed playing Limbo. Playdead released Limbo in 2010 and INSIDE in 2016. It should be about time to release the next game. I am looking forward to it!

Obligatory YouTube explainer:

I like the idea of Limbo very much. Horror puzzle platformer that looks as some kind of interactive painting. Its misty and purely black and white aesthetic with some great sound design on top, creates an iconic and memorable experience. I was genuinely impressed by the first third of the game where a big spider chases you. Also the scene where you brutally pull its legs, will be forever imprinted into my memory. But after that encounter, the game began to feel a bit repetative. Gone is the big and terryfing thing that chases you. Instead it is replaced with a plethora of simmilary looking levels with industrial theme. The industrial theme also removed some of the imaginative aspect for me as the cogs and levers very literally convey the puzzle theme. Especially compared to beautiful landscapes in first half of the game where the puzzles were more diverse and hidden in the environment. However there were still good levels in the second half of the game. I especially liked the mind control larva. But they were overall defenitely less memorable. Maybe they should have included some more creepy monsters.

The game overall felt very similar to one of my all time favourites - Night Sky from 2011. Night Sky might not have so varied puzzle mechanics but it compensates with a beautiful and varied artstyle througout the game.

But because Limbo has a very consistent and defined artstyle, some levels might feel very simmilar and unmemorable when the scenery doesn't substantially change in the next level.

Regardless, the game is worth giving a shot. Play it with headphones as the sound really enhances the experience. If you like it I also highly recommend above mentioned Night Sky.

Critics' Score:

Metacritic: 90/100

Game Informer: 9/10

EDGE: 9/10

Gamespot: 9/10

Eurogamer: 9/10

IGN: 9/10

Have you ever wondered if someone were to make a puzzle-platform, mixing Tim Burton, a bit of Lynch's Eraserhead and the German Expressionist beauty of Robert Weine, how it would look and feel. No? I haven't either, but I am clearly part of a target audience for it, and here I have it Limbo. For the moment you open the game, a certainty that you are playing something very original is settled; the glorious black and white, the film grain and the distorted sound, like if you were watching an old forgotten, twisted celluloid from the '30s, and simply with that presentation, the game had won a pass.

But what I really love about this game or any of the like, is when there is no tutorials and by knowing some basic control mapping, you already know how to play, and then without any need of text, you are solving puzzles by logic. That level of intuitive interaction, is fantastic and it really pushes the notion, that you are solving the puzzles. The story is minimal, but I think the tone stablished speaks volumes; from an arachnophobe's nightmare, to a "Lord of The Flies" gone awry, to an industrial horror; the game says enough without saying much.

The only reason why I don't rate this 5 stars, is due to my issues with its 3rd act. It stretched out for too long, and although I love some gravity puzzles, having already timed 3hours before, with the end so near, I thought it broke the pace. But, that's a little complain compared to the astonishingly dark and strangely beautiful journey.

Score: 83/100

This is the first game I played on the Xbox one, what a dark twisted little thing. The controls were easy, but at times nonresponsive. The little character designs were simple yet effective and the enemies were very creepy which is always a huge plus to me. Although the puzzles can be too simple and as the game goes on it can be slightly repetitive and aimless, the experience is still worthwhile for the price and length. I feel like this game was responsible for all those indie platformers with very dark settings, simple controls, and minimalist character designs. The good part is that this game had a hand in initiating that style, the bad part is that others have perfected and made it better.

Limbo was a game I was excited to play. The art style was original and interesting, it was getting rave reviews, awards, and acclaim. I was so hyped for this game and for the most part, I really enjoyed myself. What drew me to Limbo was the art and my GOD is it cool.

The black and white, film noir adds to the heavy atmosphere that engulfs the entire game. The whole world that the player explores is dark, dreary, and full of danger and the art makes it very apparent that Limbo is a place where hope and safety do not exist. The atmosphere makes the player feel isolated and shrouds Limbo in an air of mystery and intrigue. I couldn't wait to explore and uncover the secrets of this gloomy and violent world.

The premise of the game is that you are an unnamed boy who wakes up in Limbo with no clue as to how he wound up there and now must find his sister. Good setup except the player going in wouldn't know this without reading the game's summary on Steam. You just wake up in a forest.

No cut-scene or text explains the plot, it just starts. That's fine, it's kind of like the original Super Mario Bros. with the story being in the manual, but it still rubs me the wrong way that the main emotional incentive for going on this journey is not there in the beginning.

You do see visions of the boy's sister later in the game, but I was confused at first. "Who is that girl"? I asked myself, only to look it up later and felt stupid for not getting it sooner.

The gameplay consists of puzzle solving and light platforming and it is REALLY GOOD. The puzzles are challenging and inventive, involving unique mechanics involving worms that burrow into the player's brain, gravity changing switches, and using bear traps to tear the legs off of a giant spider. Failure to overcome these challenges results in DEATH.

Horrible, brutal, grotesque, and revolting death. The boy experiences impalement, beheading, getting mowed down by machine guns, drowning, electrocution, being crushed by pistons, hacked to bits by giant saws, his entire torso ripped from his head by a bear trap, just to name of few. Death is so prominent in this game, it's where the game gets its title. No matter how many ways you die, you're forever stuck in Limbo. It is depressing, especially when put against the melancholy drone that is the game's music and the fact that the boy is not the only child stuck in Limbo. Other children are featured dying in this game, kid corpses everywhere and the children that still live try to kill you.

It's a kill or be killed world in Limbo as Flowey would say.

To encourage exploration, the game has these little egg things hidden throughout the game and crushing them all rewards you with a secret challenge area, which is neat. The game is also not too long, which is not a bad thing as a short length is a staple for games in this genre.

The game would be a 10 for me if not for one thing: THE STORY. I already gave you the premise which I think is alright, but it's what happens afterward that loses me. There is the aforementioned spider that serves as the main antagonist in the first half of the game and the other children that try to murder you, which when encountered make the player question the nature of the world they inhabit. Is this really Limbo? The place between hell and heaven? Or has something happened to the world where killer creatures roam and only children remain? You never really know for sure.

Why do the children want to kill you? What happened to the boy and sister before the game starts? How were they separated? Where are the adults? The ambiguity of the game gave way for the community to create theories for the game's hidden meaning, mostly surrounding the game's ending. SPOILERS AHEAD. SKIP TO "SPOILERS END"

The game ends with the boy completing the final puzzle to have the gravity shift and flinging him through a glass wall where he passes out. He wakes up to find himself in the forest where the game began.

The boy begins to walk forward until he sees his sister at the base of a tree, with a treehouse above her. She appears to be digging or searching for something, maybe burying something. It's hard to tell. The boy approaches her while she's is digging. She senses something behind her, maybe she hears his footsteps, so she stands up, surprised, still not looking his way. Then the game ends. The title screen appears to show the same scene except the tree house appears rotted, the grass longer, and in place of the boy and his sister are masses of flies hovering above the ground where they once stood.

WTF DOES IT MEAN? Obviously, the siblings are dead which could explain their entry into to Limbo. But they died where they stood. There are many theories that involve their cause of death, how the many threats represent the boy's fears, and so on, but I don't think any of it is a satisfying conclusion to the game. Maybe I am greedy or perhaps I am searching for a deeper meaning than there actually is, but I just think that this game had more to tell but doesn't know how to tell it. SPOILERS END.

The creator wanted the game to have a vague story, giving details so that the player can put together the pieces to see their own "Big Picture", but from what people have come up with, I just don't think it's as deep as it thinks it is. "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo." That's all you need. Nothing changes knowing the theories surrounding the game, my initial impressions are the same as my thoughts now. The creator himself read the theories and said that they were "scary close" to what he actually intended. That's awesome! With the little clues that he gave, people were still able to piece it together the way he intended. That's a success.

So while the riddle that is Limbo's story disappoints me, it might impress you so don't let my stupid opinion get in the way of you enjoying the game. One last thing I should note is the sound design, not music, just SOUND. It is chilling, there is no game that is layered as intricately as Limbo when it comes to sound design. It works as much if not more than the art in order to create and maintain the atmosphere. As a whole Limbo is a great game and I would absolutely recommend it. I also heard Inside is a good game to check out so I'll be sure to play that one too.

Be aware that the game is short and $11 might not be worth it for some, but I think it is. This game is art, no question about it and everyone should play it at least once.