Limbo

The Short


Pros
- Presented in only black and white with a charcoal dinge about it
- Complex platformer/puzzler with clever puzzles
- Creepy and quite terrifying at times
- Builds a unique type of suspense often absent from other games
- An excellent example of doing less with more

Cons
- Extremely short
- Low replayability
- Loses some of the suspense in the second half
- Story is relatively nonexistant

Limbo is a creepy game that isn't like anything you've played before

The Long


The premise behind Limbo is a simple one. A boy wakes up in a forest, and must find his sister. As he ventures deeper into the dark woods he finds he is not along, and each progression forward only increases the danger. Along the way he'll encounter more and more complex puzzles, some of which will prove disastrously fatal. It's a pretty basic idea, and that alone probably couldn't carry the game.

What Limbo excels at is taking a basic concept and making it extraordinary. First off you have the graphics. The game is cast in complete black and white; no color, ever. The whole thing looks like it was drawn with charcoal on paper, a very blurry vision of the world. The minimalistic view is extremely striking, especially in motion, and makes i look more like a piece of art than a game.

The second thing it does is cuts almost all sound from the game unless completely necessary. The woods are often deathly silent, as is the city and factory you eventually reach. No voices are ever spoken. There is never any actual music except perhaps a chord played for dramatic effect on very rare instances. Most of the time all you hear are your echoing footsteps as you progress forward, not knowing what horrors await you ahead.

The third thing it does is present some of the most horrific video game deaths I've ever seen. This is a "T for Teen" rated game, but honestly I'm surprised it got that low a rating. You play as a child, but deaths are long, painful, and often gruesome. Your first death by a giant spider is horrific. Your first death by a hidden bear trap is absolutely shocking. And by the time you reach puzzles that have giant saw blades, your hands begin to sweat and your grip tightens on your controller. This game is playing for serious, and it isn't afraid to show it. All with the slow, quiet, minimalistic way Limbo presents every small detail.

Mess this up, and you'll see it in your nightmares

Limbo is, first and foremost, an experience. It is dark, violent, harrowing, and suspenseful. The first area - a forest that may not be as empty as you first think - contains some of the most tense moments in any game I've played. The game knows when to give you long segments where you just walk, stringing out your anxiety as several screens pass without anything happening. It's a hard timing balance between suspense and overdrawing it, but Limbo manages to pull it off.

This suspense, unfortunately, doesn't last throughout the entire game. After the forest you enter a city, and then a sawblade-filled factory. Here the game switches from being atmospheric to being a raw puzzle game, filled with plenty of smart tricks that fit right alongside other puzzle platforming greats like Braid. While there is no doubt that the puzzles in the later sections are clever and satisfying, the fact that almost all the horror and anxiety is gone sort of bummed me out. This is especially noticed simply because the first part is so good with its atmosphere, that when you take even a little bit away the contrast is (if you forgive the pun) black and white.

It's a pity most of the creepy backgrounds disappear late in the game

Another issue with Limbo is its length. Now, since you'll probably be on edge the entire time you are playing, it'll feel like 5-6 hours as you carefully make your way through Limbo's dangerous world. In truth, I beat the game in under 3 hours which, for a $15 game (on release) was a bit of a pricy experience. You can go back to try and find secret collectables, and there is a near-impossible achievement for beating the game in one sitting, under and hour, and without dying (all in the same run), but other than that there isn't a lot to return to. Once you've seen Limbo's chilling setpieces and creepy monsters, it just isn't the same the second time around. It reminded me a bit of Portal, where the first, blank-slate run is amazing, but all the runs after that lack the "first timey" awe and wonderment. Portal made do by embedding the whole world with secrets about its story. Limbo does no such thing, and thus replayability hurts.

Speaking of Limbo's story...there really isn't one. The XBLA description, "Searching for his sister, a young boy ventures into LIMBO" is pretty much all you get. The game makes no attempt to explain anything about his sister, why he's in Limbo, or what anything that is happening means. Compare this to another puzzle platformer, Braid, which wove its story deep into both the world and the puzzles. Braid has one of the most clever and satisfying endings of any game I've played, mostly because it knew how to present information and how to withhold it. Limbo just withholds, and it suffers for it.

The quiet moments in Limbo cannot be overstated

As an experience, I highly recommend Limbo. As a puzzle game, it is well crafted and an honest brain-stumper the first time around. However, it must be remembered that this game is extremely short, and once you burn through it once you'll probably never revisit it. I've had several friends come over and simply play through it at my house, and then they get the whole experience for free. If you have a friend with the game, by all means play through it. If not, you'll have to decide if the current asking price of $10 is worth it. For me, I'd say it's an instant buy at $5, if only because the experience is so unforgettable. It'll be up to you to decide if it's worth another $5 to experience this wonderful, if woefully short, indie masterpiece.


If I had a star rating, I'd give it a four out of five. It is available on Steam, XBLA, and PSN.