Review: Limbo

Limbo is a side scrolling puzzle game for the Xbox Live Arcade. It was developed by Playdead Studios.

Limbo's silhouette style creates a dark and haunting setting. The giant spiders add to that.

A little boy wakes up in the woods and runs to the right, eventually descending into a pit. That is the entire back story.

The player takes control of the nameless boy as he moves right, first through a dangerous forest, and then through the ruins of some type of industrial complex. The game is presented as one long trek; it is not divided into any segments. All the boy can do is jump and push/pull blocks/crates/switches.
The obstacles of Limbo are all puzzles. Most of them physics puzzles, like pushing a crate onto something to reach a rope to swing to another place. A lot of them require quick timing, like trying to reach a platform before a boulder, or a buzz saw, or most memorably, a giant spider reaches the boy and kills him in a horrific manner. And he does die in horrific ways, with his limbs and head getting cut off, or blood spurting out when he gets impaled on spikes. Later puzzles take advantage of the games physics engine, and involve using momentum or artificial gravity to solve the puzzle. Most players will need two to three tries to get through any puzzle. Thankfully whenever the boy dies he re-spawns right next to the puzzle. There are about only three puzzles are really frustrating, the rest the player should get after a few tries. There are also a few puzzles where the player loses control of the boy which are fun too.

The most distinctive thing about Limbo is its art design. Everything is in black and white. The boy and everything he interacts with looks like a silhouette, except for the boy’s two white eyes. The backgrounds, which are very detailed, with decaying trees and buildings that change while the boy moves, are blurry and covered in fog, but easy to discern. And the whole thing is shot with a grainy filter, which adds to the bleakness of the setting.

The characters are really well animated. The boy looks like he actually has weight; the way he jumps his arms actually swing along with him.

There is no story. The only clue to a story is that the boy sees a girl a couple of times, but the game does not elaborate on who she is. But that is mostly okay, the lack of story makes the game more mysterious. The ending is rather abrupt though, why it ends in the place it ends feels more like the developers ran out of ideas instead of something conclusive.

The game is a little scary. The atmosphere is oppressive, and things like the giant spider get creepy music cues that contrast with the quietness of the rest of the game.
The game is also really short, about four to five hours. And there is not much replay value until the player has forgotten to solve the puzzles. It is only ten bucks, so it is not so bad.

The only real problem with Limbo is that the novelty of the setting wears off eventually. The game starts off in a decaying forest, with other kids trying to kill the boy, giant spiders attacking the boy, and what appear to be dead children hanging from the trees. But then the game shifts to the factory level which is far less interesting yet takes up at least half of the game. It is cool at first when it looks like the boy is jumping around a city, but that gets quickly replaced by factories. The puzzles stop being about dodging cool things like traps set for the boy, and instead are merely random buzz-saws or boxes. The backgrounds are less interesting; a lot of the time they are only grey hallways.

While the lack of any story is fine, without any sign that there is at least an actual world the game just becomes a series of puzzles that have no real reason to be completed. If only there were more areas, or signs that something was going on, something to indicate the player was making progress in any way instead of just going to the right because that is the only option.
Limbo is a good, short little game that people should play just for the experience of seeing the setting and atmosphere. It does stumble at the end, and it is short, so it is not a perfect game.