Limbo

Though independent games have been around forever, the advent of online consoles has made indie games much easier to find and to acquire. Though there are hundreds of indie games released each year (check The AV Club's Sawbuck Gamer articles for a round up of some of the more interesting choices), only a few ever get widespread attention, usually due to some interesting hook. Months ago I had a chance to play Braid, a time-traveling Super Mario-esque adventure with a "brilliant" story. Though the gameplay was awesome, the story left me a bit...cold. Still, I had a great time playing it. So color me happy when a Braid-esque game, minus pretentious story was released. In the midst of downloading a bevy of Rock Band tracks, I made sure to download Danish developer PlayDead's Limbo, the first game of Microsoft's big Xbox Live Summer Games.

Limbo may remind those of you who played it of Braid, though instead of bright water-colored art and time-travel mechanics, Limbo comes in an entirely black-and-white world filled with a variety of crafty puzzles, creepy monsters, and a bunch of brutal ways to die. The story revolves around your search for your sister but other than the game description on Xbox Live and the five-second ending, you wouldn't even know that there was a story. While I typically dislike when games fail to provide a clear narrative, I could really care less with a game like this. Limbo plays a lot like many of the side-scrolling puzzlers of yore like Abe's Oddysee, Heart of Darkness (perhaps its closest relative), and Out Of This World in which a wall is put in your face every few steps and only through careful observation and manipulation of your surroundings can you proceed. Unlike some puzzle games, Limbo spends a long time making sure that every puzzle feels natural and you, as a player, are never forced to make wild guesses or to try to follow the designer's nonsensical logic. I only got stuck once in the whole game and the solution appeared so clear once I read it. Though not every environmental puzzle in games of this type is a winner, nearly every puzzle in Limbo is. Starting with some simple, "swing on a vine, push a box" puzzles, the game never stopped showing off its variety from puzzles with gravity to mechanical puzzles to some really weird puzzles featuring quick timing and a brain parasite...nothing you see too often! I played through the game in about five or six hours and never got bored.

Other than the amazing game design, the sepia tones are reminiscent of a silent film like "Nosferatu" with each new area from forest to dilapidated city maintaining a menacing tone due to the dark always surrounding you. I never would have thought a black and white game would get high praise for its graphics, but I found myself truly caught up in the world of Limbo. Stylized beats life-like every time for me. Though the graphics are very cool, there isn't much in the way of a soundtrack. A few small music pieces play during some game events, but that's it. Still, I suppose orchestral soundtracks wouldn't totally fit with the feel of the game and its otherworldliness.

Limbo costs about 15 bucks in Microsoft space points and only took me about five to six hours to beat. Sure, there are a number of secrets to look for (I found four all by myself!) and a big challenge of beating the whole game without dying more than five times, but once you've solved the puzzles, they're solved. Some might still give you trouble, but you could probably breeze through the game a lot quicker in a second or third playthrough. Still, I had an awesome time every minute I played Limbo. From gruesome death scene to gruesome death scene (and you will die a lot) I kept coming back for more. The game never felt frustrating and always came at me with something new and interesting. Limbo really wants you to have fun and to experience its clever puzzles, not to punish you or to waste your time. I made many good memories while playing this game; regardless of the cost to time-spent-playing ratio being a bit , high Limbo is an evening and a half worth of pure, unadulterated fun. Please play this Amazing game.

P.S. When I went to Wikipedia to find the developer's name, I saw some other reviews...which said many of the same things I said! So I'm either becoming as good a writer as some professionals or we are all hacks. Probably the latter.