The choking, wheezing noise fire-extinguishers make when they run out of CO2 made me giggle every time, as did the weekly cafeteria menu in the game’s nightmare sequences that read “MURDERMURDERMURDERMURDERMURDERMURDER BEANS.”īeneath this jokey veneer, however, Superliminal exhorts a genuinely positive and wholesome message about problem-solving and not giving up. The game is filled with gently chucklesome gags, some of which are scripted while others are visual and environmental. Superliminal shares that same light-hearted, goofy humour, right down to the AI tannoy announcements that explain potential death-scenarios in the way a supermarket might announce an in-store discount. One or two conundrums are downright irritating, including one involving blocked doors that had me ready to put my fist through the screen.īut like Portal, it’s the storytelling and theme that take centre-stage through the mid-to-late game, and what maintains its quality even when the puzzles start to wobble. Indeed, more than a few puzzles devolve into clicking on the environment until you find the one thing you can actually interact with. What doesn’t help is that the range of objects you can interact with is limited. The result is a sense that you’re not getting the game which the opening sequences led you to anticipate.Īs it turns out, the perspective-altering puzzles return later in more dramatic form, although Superliminal still never really delves deep enough into its central mechanic for my liking. All of this is still quite fun, but it feels like the game is awkwardly scrabbling for new ideas rather than layering them into the core puzzling concept. One involves lining up 2D images in rooms to turn them into 3D objects.
#Superliminal space series
Or at least, that is how the game’s next half-hour presents, as its following few levels switch the onus away from the core concept to a series of other optical illusions. Unfortunately, Superliminal quickly runs out of ways to keep “make it bigger/make it smaller” interesting. It’s worth noting that Superliminal lets you pick up and drop any “active” object at any distance, which is both a necessary component of its perspective-warping play, and important to bear in mind when solving puzzles. Make a chess-pawn smaller so you can fit it onto a button in a notch carved out of the wall. Make a bunch of child’s building blocks bigger so you can climb up to a higher platform. The initial puzzles are all framed around this key mechanic. I can only assume Superliminal’s objects have more levels-of-detail than Pac-Man in 4k. It’s impressive how you can keep increasing the size of an object without it turning into one big smeared texture. Suddenly, the cheese-wedge you picked up off the table is now the size of a three-bedroomed bungalow and shakes the ground when you drop it. But Superliminal does this seamlessly such that the size of the object doesn’t appear to have changed until you actually put it down. In effect, all you’re doing is making objects bigger and smaller. You know that bit in Apollo 13 where Tom Hanks puts his thumb over the Moon? Well, according to the rules of Superliminal, doing that would actually make your thumb the same size as the Moon. This lets you pick up an object and automatically adjust its size based on its relative perspective to the nearest wall you’re facing. For now, let’s focus on the thing that immediately makes Superliminal appealing – its core puzzling mechanic. We’ll talk more about Superliminal’s style later. But surrealist walking sims like The Stanley Parable and What Remains of Edith Finch are equally important touchstones. I’ve already mentioned the game’s debt to Portal. You’re guided through these spaces by the gentle voice of Dr Glenn Pierce, and the somewhat less-gentle tones of a female AI. The entire game takes place in a sequence of dreams that loosely mimic the layout of the treatment centre. The premise, such as I gathered it, sees you play as a patient at an experimental sleep-treatment centre that specialises in a unique style of dream-therapy. It’s not always a great game, but it is never less than fascinating. Its story starts out as pound-shop Portal and ends as something unique and touching. It has a wonderful, brain-flipping central mechanic, but doesn’t always know what to do with it. It starts out as a puzzle game about perspective and ends as a perspective game that sometimes involves puzzles. Superliminal is an interesting case study in the interplay between systems and theme.
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