Guilty Review: Limbo

The debut puzzle-platformer by PlayDead Studios takes us on a corrective sojourn through the realm of the dead, recalling Number None's Braid.

Comparisons with that game are unavoidable, of course. Both titles are 'thoughtful' puzzle games disguised as platformers, making use of their genres' conventions to tease and subvert. Both take place in unsettling 'dream' worlds where the human player feels alien and alone (though the dissolving blacks of Limbo are far removed from Braid's more colourful and winsome scenery). Both are happy to flip our understanding of the world on its head (at times, quite literally), and yet remain fluent to control. Both are also highly tolerant of player death: in Braid, the flow of time is reversible, and so death is rendered meaningless; while in Limbo, dying is at worst a mistake easily corrected, and at best a portal to discovery.

The most immediate differences are stylistic. While both games strive for an admirable minimalism, Limbo takes things to, well, the 'edge' of comprehension. Braid possesses a certain pomposity, after all, providing us at times with basic hints and instructions and popping up more frequently with sub-Calvino ramblings. In Limbo, there isn't a button prompt in sight (though the 'How to Play' section in the options menu deigns to tell us we can move, jump, and 'action'). There is no tutorial, no heads-up display of any kind, no speech, no text. Like Braid, it is not even clear the player has been gifted control when the game begins; your first 'action', in fact, is to open your eyes and distinguish yourself from the undergrowth.

Which brings me to this: during the three or four hours you spend playing Limbo, everything is presented in a moody monochrome, the graininess and flickering of which recalls classic cinema. The resultant nostalgia is exploited throughout, with the corners of the screen suffering deliberate vignetting, and most objects (and most of the environment) appearing only in silhouette. This particular film isn't silent, however, and one of the great strengths of Limbo is its sound design, which elevates even the most humdrum of noises to the level of suspense, and  punctuates (or punctures) the game's more oppressive moments with an appropriately sombre score. Unquestionably elegant, this must be the only Xbox 360 title that refuses  to colourize even the scant button prompts that appear in its menus. The world of Limbo is truly as grey as any place can be, and the effect is to numb and disconcert. Occasionally, over the course of play, the gloom is relieved  by a few pale sunbeams (the source of which we can never fully see for the mists and cloud) – but even these serve a purpose in gameplay.

The predominant silhouetting also helps to mask any potential flaws in how the world and its contents appear and animate; the omnipresent black suggests, implies, causes us to imagine. We see just about as much as we need to survive, and shiver at the rest. One of Limbo's great deaths, and there are plenty, occurs when the player wanders off into the dark, until they are visible only by the pinprick whites of their eyes ... which then suddenly wink out. Given the consistency of its aesthetic, it is hard to imagine a way in which Limbo could look better than it does, short of increasing the resolution. Please note that I do not often get to say that about a videogame. The animation, too, is close to faultless, and is tied to dependable physics and responsive controls. On a technical level, there is nothing wrong with Limbo. Again, that is a rare remark to make.

The second respect in which Limbo differs vastly from Braid is in its underpinning design philosophy. Braid is – as far as I can tell – about how one thing (time) impinges on our lives and conjectures, both retrieving and ravaging the past, and its mechanics reflect that: Johnathan Blow took a singular idea and exhausted it, juicing all of the fruits from that tree. By contrast, Limbo is much more haphazard: its puzzles are united somewhat in their physical nature (aided superbly by the durability of the game's controls, and even the subtlest judders from the pad itself), but are in fact wildly varied in concept and execution. But there is an eerie naturalism about the problems of Limbo nonetheless, and their solutions are rarely less than intuitive. Even as the woods and boulders of the early game give way to human structures, to more complex machinery and button-pushing, the world of the game always behaves credibly, rewarding (and even promoting!) elegant thought.

There is one other consistent element throughout the game, namely death. You will 'die' often in Limbo, and it is clear that the developers intended this because death is so easily  swatted away (a tap of a button instantly reloads to the last of many, many checkpoints). It is also  rewarded with appropriately gruesome visuals. Initially discomfiting, the agonized deaths your child avatar suffers will probably come to seem mildly humorous – and then wickedly funny. This black physical comedy relieves the (rare) frustration of failure, and is in fact essential to progression through the world.

An example: there is a wonderful moment where you learn by trial and error (read: death and correction) that not standing on a particular trigger will cause the piston looming above to plummet downwards, crushing your avatar to a syrup. Apply this new wisdom to the next piston in line, however, and the result will be different, though the penalty is the same; there is no way for the cautious first-time player to avoid dying here at least once. Limbo finds vicious glee in confounding your expectations at every turn, demanding you learn the curious rules of its gameworld either through careful observation or bold experimentation, with the latter option invariably leading to death, and eventually success. In the particular case of the pistons, you had better remember which was triggered by what, as you will be running back that way shortly, chased by a pack of blowpipe-wielding foes – who luckily lack your newfound insight into where it's safe to stand. Let me take this opportunity to say that Limbo often reminds me of Another World. For a 2D adventure, this is close to the highest praise there is.

And all of this dying is apposite, of course. This is a game about passage through the fringes of hell (a river crossed by boat early in the game may as well be the Acheron), and perhaps an eventual escape from the grey lands of the indigent dead: it should be unpleasant, and suffering should be the mechanism by which suffering is alleviated, at least according to some belief systems. We die a thousand deaths so as to not die one more, and that these deaths are both charming and chilling is what makes this not just an entertaining videogame but an excellent one. Of course, that title, Limbo, could also be a grey-veiled jab at the player's befuddlement when 'stuck' on a given puzzle. And while that is very clever too and could possibly support another paragraph, I will refrain, because the game itself refrains from such self-acclaim (can Braid say the same?).

On a related note, Limbo may well have the cleverest main menu screen ever, or at least the cleverest one I can remember. (If you are the kind of person who devours reviews and then laments the spoilers therein, you should probably look away now.) The pastoral setting of the menu screen – with its two positioned clouds of swarming flies – is entirely innocuous on first firing up the game, but becomes more personal and poignant upon completion. You are a boy who has died, I think. You are trying to find your sister, also dead. Perhaps what you go through in the game is a travesty of what you have gone through in life, or gone through just ahead of your recent death, and your life is now flashing (read: sidescrolling) before your eyes. The game sustains this level of speculation, but does not demand it, and that too is admirable. Plot is not imperative in Limbo, nor should it be. There can be no 'ludonarrative dissonance' in a game where there is little narrative and mostly feeling (although if you do attempt the platforming devil's chord of walking left instead of right at the game's beginning, you will be rewarded for it). And thank God, or whoever rules the lower places, for that.

(I will say this: at the end, just before you find your sister, you are sent flying through a pane of glass. Some people have already speculated that this is in fact a representation of a windscreen, and that the murky, half-distinct object lodged in the nearby tree of the menu screen is a car. I disagree; I think it's a school bus.)

And so to the objections. People have already said that Limbo is too short or "not worth the money", and they are entitled to believe so. I suspect, however, that if you have read this far into the review without closing the tab, the length of this game did not – or will not – matter to you. It might also be suggested that Limbo is too easy, or that there is not enough to 'complete', or that the leaderboards (!) don't record speed runs. None of these complaints should be interesting to anyone, and I cannot imagine myself further into the mind that promotes them. I see you nodding, so while I have you here: you may have heard that the second half of this game loses itself somewhat, that the oppressive grind of urbanity and factories and world-turning cogs sap the appeal of the earlier stages. And yes, that's true: the road back to civilization, to the place we died, gets uglier and less endurable with every step. It is absolutely correct to say that Limbo becomes harder, and harder to bear, as it goes on. But listen, dear reader: it should.