LIMBO

About LIMBO

LIMBO is a game by Playdead, released on Xbox in August 2010 and on Steam in 2011, and since brought to PlayStation, Xbox One, Switch, iPhone and Android. Its premise fits in one line from the store page: uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO. There are no words and no explanations; you start walking.

The world is drawn in silhouette, black shapes against grey fog with a film-grain blur at the edges. It begins in a forest where a giant spider hunts the boy, and moves on past dark water and into misty industrial places of pipes, platforms and hanging machinery. Other figures appear in the distance, and they are not friendly.

It plays as a side-view puzzle platformer. You run, jump, climb and push or pull objects, and every few screens hold a puzzle of timing, physics or machinery. Many traps are hidden until they kill you, so you learn by dying and retrying from a checkpoint close by. The deaths are sudden and shown plainly, which is a large part of what makes the game unsettling.

It is quieter and more abstract than most horror games: the fear is the loneliness, the grey silence and the sense that anything ahead can kill you. Playdead's later INSIDE builds on the same idea in a colder, stranger world, and the Little Nightmares games take the small, powerless child into more open monster horror. It suits players who like puzzles and atmosphere more than jump scares.

How to play LIMBO

1. Buy LIMBO on Steam, a console store or the App Store or Google Play, and start it; play begins almost at once.
2. Move the boy left and right, jump and climb ledges and ropes.
3. Grab and push or pull crates, logs and other objects to make a way forward.
4. Watch the screen for traps and moving threats, and work out the timing or mechanism that gets you past.
5. When the boy dies, try again from the nearby checkpoint with what you learned.

Tips

• Expect to die a lot; most traps are meant to be learned, and checkpoints are close together.
• Move slowly into new screens and look at the ground and the trees for hidden traps.
• If a puzzle seems impossible, look at what can be grabbed, pushed or switched nearby.
• Play with sound on: noises often warn you of what is coming.

Questions