Follow the red liquid trail, and as you proceed you’ll discover a gigantic, red pit.Go straight through the door that’s partially obstructed by diet soda boxes, and through the next door.You’ll find yourself in another parallel corridor. Here, you need to walk into the darkness on the right side of the corridor (facing the dead end). In the room after, jump over the tables covered in blue tarp and acetylene tanks to proceed to the next door.Proceed through the next set of doors until you find yourself in a room full of boxes, and then another room full of boxes.Enter the door to the top-right that’s illuminated by the red light.Head out of Suite E, through the reception area and into the long corridor.The length of a game is not a measure of its quality, but Superliminal fails to provide a satisfactory progression arc to justify its short length. Every puzzle you solve was a treat and not just because they encouraged lateral thinking - in each puzzle I saw the potential for some truly mind-boggling puzzles later down the line. I assume that the final act was intended as a victory lap to close off the game, but it’s hard to celebrate when you feel robbed of the challenge Superliminal spent the better part of two hours teasing. A few puzzles remain, but nothing that commands much of your attention or tests your abilities - not any more than those before it, anyway. When the story does take control in the final act, it robs the game of most of its challenge. The narration rarely affects how you navigate the dream, and certainly doesn’t provide much of a narrative carrot for players to continue their puzzle solving. Superliminal’s story provides a loose framework for its puzzles to fit inside, but doesn’t do a whole lot else. Rarely did I find that my newfound knowledge was being tested when I finally felt like I could begin tackling more complex puzzles, the game was at its end.Īnd what an ending it is. The entire adventure feels more like a two-hour tutorial, preparing you for a game that doesn’t exist. Each level not only introduces something new, it abandons what players had explored previously. What’s most peculiar about Superliminal’s puzzles is that, rather than exploring what already exists in greater depth, the game opts to shift focus instead. Pretty colors and mind-melting set pieces. It’s difficult to treat Superliminal like a puzzle game – its priorities are discovery and sense pleasure. In fact, diving into the experience with this perspective may be the only thing that spares you from inevitable disappointment. It’s an absolute delight seeing what the developers think of next, and under that lens, Superliminal’s length is perfect. Over the next two hours, you’ll see broken images turn into objects, structures to shrink and explore, and more brain-tickling perspective-based tomfoolery. The atmosphere is equal parts welcoming and ominous - the perfect fit for the strange, yet endearing, puzzles.Īltering object size is only one tool in Superliminal’s endless bag of tricks. The game wears its influences on its sleeves, and that’s a beautiful thing. Flashes of The Stanley Parable and The Beginner’s Guide permeate the experience, with a significant helping of Portal and The Witness to boot. At only two hours, the game can and should be completed in a single session.ĭeveloper Pillow Castle channeled its inner Davey Wreden for both Superliminal’s story and structure. But despite the endless possible applications for its signature mechanic, Superliminal is a short game. A scatterbrained story about a kooky scientist and his dream machine attempt to provide a little structure to the perspective pandemonium. Many of the ideas from Superliminal’s time as Museum of Simulation Technology also survived the renaming process. Superliminal has since taken that mechanic and crafted a myriad of mind-bending puzzles around it.
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