300 is a very special number to me chiefly because if you turn your head 90 degrees to the left it kinda looks like a butt that is pooping. Hence, this entry calls for some necessary pomp and circumstance. Since I don't have anything quite that auspicious sitting in my backlog library right now, though, I've opted instead for the excellent perspective-shifting, first-person, puzzle-platforming game Superliminal from Pillow Castle Games, which I cannot see the title of without thinking of that one Lenny joke from The Simpsons. (Lenny is also very special to me, but that's by the by.) In Superliminal, the player is an unnamed and unseen patient at a dream therapy clinic that finds themselves in a bind when the artificial dream world they awake into begins breaking down and the supervising doctors start panicking as they attempt to emancipate you from an increasingly surreal nightmare.

The game is one of those taking after the likes of Antichamber by messing around with not only the physics of its inherent engine (Unity, which I imagine would break pretty easily just by breathing on it) but that of the player's perspective and sense of reality. It's a game that encourages lateral thinking, in many cases thinking literally outside the box as many puzzles are solved with the application of cubes as makeshift platforms. Superliminal finds every perspective gimmick it can find to exploit though to its credit doesn't spend an overly long time with any one of them. This might include looking at a 2D object at a certain angle to make it appear in the environment as a 3D one, changing the shapes of objects by moving closer or further away to make them the ideal scale, making a doorway big or small to change your size after you pass through, or warping you seamlessly so that a room's entrance might vanish in front of you and appear behind you. It has its fun while doing so, dropping some GLaDOS-type interaction with an "orientation protocol" that insists that the lack of proper orientation that caused this mishap is not its fault, the dulcet if utterly unhelpful words of a Dr. Glenn Pierce (he introduces himself each time to ensure there's no discomforting surprise), and various ridiculous signs and leftover notes from the clearly overworked dream lab design team.

Superliminal doesn't last long but is absolutely packed with puzzle conceits, and even though you spend quite a considerable portion of the game stacking boxes to reach doors halfway up walls there's usually enough variation involved to make each instance memorable or at the very least give you a little more trouble than last time as the previous strategy might not necessarily apply. It is absolutely the type of first-person game where you spend the whole time walking around and doing some light 3D platforming but its ingenuity and humor puts it ahead of many of its peers working the same first-person puzzle beat, even if it does run out of steam quickly in comparison. I'd liken it to The Unfinished Swan, the first big game made by the What Remains of Edith Finch people: each of its levels had its own ingenious concept to build a smattering of obstacles around, before rapidly moving ahead to everything else it had to share with you like an overenthusiastic creative with ADD. There's an appeal to that approach, of course: Indie games have become very adept in learning not to overstay their welcomes, choosing instead to bow out once they've shown you everything they have to show. While I did want more from the game, that's only because the quality and novelty of the two hours prior had been so consistently high. The less viable alternatives, after all, would've been more development time than the developers had available or a whole lot of padding.

I enjoyed my time with Superliminal quite a bit and because it's a game that you want to be as tight-lipped as possible about as to not spoil the many surprises it has in store it's kind of irritating to try to review it with that restriction in mind. Instead, I'll say that the game has a thirty-five minute speedrun achievement that is absolutely brutal: I rushed through the game on that second attempt without spending more than a few seconds on any given puzzle, and I still just missed it. Speedrunning puzzle games seems particularly meaningless in my view, especially when there's physics fuckery involved to trip you up at the last hurdle, and yet I'm almost obstinate enough to give it another shot. As it is though, I should probably move on with my GOTY series while there's still plenty of December left to go.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

That's going to be a wrap on 300 episodes of Indie Game of the Week! Thanks to anyone who chose to read any of these rundowns over the past six years (damn, that many?)—especially if it helped you decide to give the featured game(s) a shot—and I'll see you again in 2023 for even more Indie scrutiny. Scrutindie. (Is it too late to change the name of this feature?)