Limbo

Limbo is a clever, artsy game with some great moments and a chilling atmosphere. The controls feel great, and the constant fear of death combined with the will to explore further makes this game work quite well.   

The first thing you'll notice about this game is it's minimalist design. It's all black and white, and there is no music and hardly any sound effects. It's animated very well, and feels very fluid because of it. Obviously, if this game was in colour, it would lose a lot of its atmosphere. The one problem is that sometimes you can't tell the difference between foreground/background objects and things you can actually interact with. In the parts where it's all about platforming, this can get a bit annoying, but it's never too bad. 
 
But there are plenty of other ways to die in Limbo. The developers obviously worked hard on making this a pretty gruesome game. You can get crushed by boxes, decapitated by bear traps, and cut up by circular saws. Sometimes I found myself doing things specifically so I could die and see what it looks like. My favourite is when you land on a circular saw and get your feet cut off. There's a little bit of gore, but not that much.    

Even if you're not trying to die, you will die a lot in this game. You will also most assuredly get stuck on a puzzle too. This game is hard. During the game, they introduce new mechanics like water (your character can't swim), gravity, and magnetism. I felt like all these concepts could've been expanded a little further, because it is a very short game. There were only about three puzzles that involved magnetism, and so I never really got used to what it was actually doing. The game is only about four hours long on first playthrough, and there's ten secrets to collect, so it's a pretty short package.  
 
But, even in that short time frame, this game felt like it just couldn't consistently provide what the very beginning did. At the beginning, you wake up in a forest, and have no idea why or where you are there. The puzzles are all environment-based, and there are some weird things going on around you that you don't really understand. You find other kids laying traps for you and then running away, and giant spiders, and it's all quite interesting. As the game progresses though, it ends up just being kind of contrived puzzles in an industrial environment, without all the charm that made the beginning great. The puzzles are still fun, but it didn't feel as special.   

That being said, Limbo is still an amazing game. The beginning parts alone are enough to recommend, but the puzzles and platforming bits after that are clever too. I strongly recommend buying this game, but for a $15 price tag, it doesn't provide as much content as you'd hope.