I don’t really remember the circumstances surrounding the release of Limbo. I want to say that it was there leading the charge of the indie game movement, but maybe not? Seems like it came around a couple years too late for that. In any case, it must have been a fairly big Xbox Live Arcade release, as I was super jazzed for it, and I’ve never followed XBLA games too closely.
At the time, I was in full-fledged Achievement Whore mode. Limbo, I think, was one of the first games to truly break me. I think that I may have collected three or four achievements on my first playthrough, and just couldn’t go back for more. Even with an achievement guide, I would have only been equipped to earn all the “collectible” achievements. The one challenge that seemed insurmountable was the achievement to clear the game in a single sitting with fewer than five deaths.
Even today, I can’t imagine playing Limbo enough to get that sucker. The game is evil. It goes out of its way to trick you and is filled with “gotcha” moments. It wants you to die. To show your little boy character being mutilated in unspeakable ways. That’s how you’re supposed to learn and progress in this game. You’re not supposed to get by on observation or skill. You’re supposed to be killed and then not do the thing that killed you. Even if you do play through the game several times and remember how to survive every trap, there are a number of challenges that require perfect timing. And quite frankly, under the pressure of needing not to die, I know that I would drop the ball immediately.
I just replayed the game yesterday, in a single sitting, and I must have died nearly a hundred times. Maybe even more! A number of those deaths were from traps, some were from flinging myself into pits to look for secrets, but mostly they were from mis-timed jumps that resulted in being torn apart by sawblades or being fried by a strong electrical current. Then there was the part where I slid off the same roof to my doom several dozen times because I was supposed to hit a switch mid-jump, but that wasn’t clear at all.
As sometimes happens with video games, I found that the farther I got in Limbo, the more frustrated I got with dying repeatedly. And it’s not a major setback or anything because the boy always respawns very close to wherever he died. I think that a big part of it is that the mood of the game shifted significantly at one point, and then there was no fun ambiance or mystery to keep me hooked. It was just finding a difficult challenge, and then dying over and over until I managed to jump at just the right time.
The game opens quietly, with a lone boy in a forest. There is no discernible story in Limbo. There is no text, no characters utter a single word. You march forward because that’s what you do in video games, the rest is left to interpretation. Early on, you encounter a giant spider, who will skewer the boy unless you tear off a number of its legs with a bear trap. Once you escape the spider’s lair, you will happen upon a sort of encampment. A small village of treehouses, populated by other children who will either run away or murder the boy on sight. This is, of course, unless you trick them into setting off traps and getting themselves killed. It’s a little bit horrifying, to say the least. And it goes without saying that these hostile children must die for you to progress. “Pacifist runs” didn’t become a big thing until a few years later.
What may be most disturbing of all, is that throughout this portion of the game, there are corpses all over the place. Some floating in bodies of water, some hanging from the trees, others suspended in cages. Then Limbo ups its game and actually has you drag these bodies around to solve puzzles. To hold down pressure plates or to use as buoys across a pond, as a couple examples. It’s disturbing and weird and you start to question what’s on the other side of these woods that could be worth going through this. But at the same time, it is intriguing and fascinating, making you wonder what exactly is going on in this world? Who are these children? Who is the boy? What happened to make them all so willing to kill without falter?
Moving on, the spider returns, and while pursuing the boy, it takes the opportunity to slaughter a number of the forest children. Finally, after crushing it with a boulder, you tear the final leg out of the still-alive arachnid, and use its body to float across yet another pool. Defeating this monster marks a turning point in Limbo: the point where it switches gears, and despite remaining consistent in visuals, audio, and gameplay, the tone of the game shifts dramatically.
Your victory over the spider is not the final encounter with a living being, but it is the last one of any significance or interest. From that point, the game world goes from a forest full of hostile creatures, to an industrial world void of any life save the boy. It devolves from a spooky horror show that makes you think, into a blander, more by-the-numbers puzzle-platformer. It loses all of its intrigue and character with the new scenery, and as far as I’m concerned, became considerably less engaging.
That is not to say that the game turns bad! No, the puzzles get more complex as soon as mechanical contraptions are introduced, and the gameplay is surely more interesting than simply pushing boxes and corpses around. But most of Limbo’s appeal to me was in its creepy atmosphere. I could play a hundred more satisfying puzzle-platformers if that’s all I wanted. But I was sold on Limbo’s weird and oppressive world. If I had known that it had lost that sense of macabre creativity and wonder less than halfway through, it may have stayed my hand in making that initial purchase. Every video game does not need a sewer level.
At the end of the day, though, I can’t say that I’m wholly disappointed with Limbo. It is an enjoyable little adventure, and has some clever puzzles tucked in amongst all the crate-pushing. It’s simply a shame that its vision seems to have fizzled out so quickly. Since the plot is so open to interpretation, though, some people suggest that this was an intentional shift. To show the boy’s journey from childhood to adulthood, and all the monotony that brings. It’s a clever theory, and I do appreciate the attempt to bring context to the game. That is just one of many, many fan theories out there, and in all honesty, picking through them may be slightly more entertaining than the game itself. So while the game may have been over after two short hours, it will keep you interested quite a bit longer if you’re like me, and enjoy reading internet chatter about it.
