PC Gamer - November 2011

REVIEWS

LITTLE BOY LOST

Indie game LIMBO proves that you can achieve a lot with very little by Kim Richards

You’re a boy searching for his missing sister, navigating the murk of gloomy forests, plunging through forbidding caves and escaping an industrial complex of whirring machines—all painted in silhouette, flickering like an old film. It’s amazing that such simplicity can create such a successful nightmare.

Limbo’s monochrome presentation and single sentence storyline form a spare, deadly, lonely world. Large sections of the game are silent, sometimes punctuated by fractured, urgent music, or scattered footsteps racing into the distance.

From the moment the first giant spider’s leg unfurls, you know you’re in a world that doesn’t want you there. Everything in Limbo is out to harm you. It’s a meat grinder, coldly snapping bear traps around your fragile little frame, and the only

other humans are hostile, chasing you away with spears and darts.

You’ll occasionally be reduced to a weeping mess, defeated by a simple puzzle that can only be overcome by getting everything just so. I spent a lip-gnashing, keyboard-smashing twenty minutes trying to run down a railway track before a descending mine cart hit a switch to electrify the rails. Twenty damn minutes watching my boy pulsate as his tiny legs failed to make the last jump.

You’re going to die. A lot. But finally realizing the infuriatingly simple solutions and achieving that damn jump will reward you with Portal-sized feelings of smugness and relief. Despite Limbo’s relatively short playtime (3-5 hours), you simply cannot miss out on this darkly evocative game. ■