So, next up on my indie kick was an interesting one.
Limbo.
Okay, so this one is dead easy to explain, but much harder to understand.
A simple platform and puzzle game that is presented in beautiful monochrome. The world begins by introducing you to simple platforming puzzles – jump here, pull this lever and so on. Although it steadily gets more complicated involving levers, platforms, inverting the world. It even has climbing sections and sections that auto scroll, normally a cardinal sin, but in this game it works. It forces you to think and to work out your next move, then it plays with you, forcing you to adapt quickly and make snap decisions.
In many ways this game reminded me of Another World. An Amiga classic that was a formative part of my gaming history. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc_0H3JO-fw)
Like Another World, it is beautifully animated and has excellent sound design. Only instead of aliens who you can’t understand you have a ghostly ambient background music and nothing else. The music gets louder and faster when things ramp up, adding to the tension of those sections.
Like Another World, the game punishes you. Regularly. You didn’t know what was on the next screen. Guess what? You are dead. Try again. Only this time, you know what is coming…the challenge comes from knowing how to solve the puzzle the game is showing you.
Now while this might sound like Dark Souls, it is worth noting that the game is not devilishly hard, and does not punish you at *every* turn, only every now and then. The puzzles are never overly complicated and are always solved with a little lateral thinking.
There is no “story” in the traditional sense, but as someone I was talking to about the game said “You kind of add your own story to the game” and she was a second year games development student so I’d think she knew what she was talking about.
Any way, I’m not going to say anything more than that. It was a free game with the PSN subscription, and if you have it in your library, go and play it. At the time of writing it seems to be about £10 on pretty much all platforms. What I would say is that (although I haven’t played it on them) I would avoid the mobile versions of this…I feel that some of the sections were tricky enough with a gamepad, without adding in touch controls.
I managed to get a small gallery of images together to show you the art style, but I don’t feel still images do the game justice. Check out some Youtube videos of the game in motion to see it in all it’s glory.
Any way… See you guys soon.