Brutally beautiful in every way; Limbo is a short, unforgettable experience.
Xbox Live Arcade has seen several memorable indie games in the past few years with the likes of Braid and Castle Crashers. In 2010 one of the stand-outs was undoubtedly Limbo, developed by a small Danish team in Playdead.
Limbo is a fairly short and simple puzzle platformer with a simply gorgeous graphical style. You take the role of a young boy who inexplicably wakes in a forest. There is no opening cinematic or dialogue to explain the situation – it just is. The basic gameplay consists of running to the right and desperately trying not to die as a plethora of nasty environmental traps and insidious hazards attempt to lead you to a grizzly demise. Circular saw blades, spike pits and giant creepy spiders are all par for course in Limbo. It can be an unforgiving game at times because of its sometimes obscure puzzles and its frustrating checkpoint system – but this does not mar the experience one bit.
The use of vignetting, darkness and film grain all go a very long way to setting an oppressive tone; a tone that Limbo sticks to throughout without remorse. The extreme darkness also means that the sound design in the game is nothing short of fantastic. Listening for sound cues as you attempt to overcome puzzles is done with a level of subtlety rarely seen in games. Even with a complete lack of voice-over or any text throughout the experience, Limbo is a deeply haunting game that I found myself thinking about weeks after I had finished it.
After no doubt meeting a horrible end a vast number of times, you'll probably reach the end of Limbo in around 5 or 6 hours which isn't a huge length of time considering the 1200 Microsoft points you'll have to lay down (roughly £10) -- which some might consider a bit steep -- but make no mistake. This is a game which is as short as it is beautiful, and yet it somehow manages to transcend the trappings of its various components in such a poignant way that I was left pondering life itself after reaching the conclusion. This is a game that should be experienced by everyone - if at least once.