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Limbo
Limbo is a puzzle-platform video game and the premiere title of independent Danish game developer Playdead Studios. The game was released in July 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade, and will later be released as a retail game pack along with Trials HD and 'Splosion Man in April 2011. Limbo is a 2D sidescroller, incorporating a physics system that governs environmental objects and the player character. The player guides an unnamed boy through dangerous environments and traps as the boy searches for his sister. The developer built the game's puzzles expecting the player to fail before finding the correct solution. Playdead called the style of play "trial and death", and used visually gruesome imagery for the boy's deaths to steer the player from unworkable solutions.
The game is presented primarily in monochromatic black-and-white tones, using lighting, film grain effects and minimal ambient sounds to create an eerie atmosphere often associated with the horror genre. Journalists praised the dark presentation, describing the work as comparable to film noir and German Expressionism. Based on its aesthetics, reviewers classified Limbo as an example of "video game as art".
Limbo received positive reviews, but was criticized for its minimal story; some critics found the open-ended work to have deeper meaning that tied well with the game's mechanics, while others believed the lack of significant plot and abrupt ending detracted from the game. A common point of criticism from reviewers was that the high cost of the game relative to its short length might deter players from purchasing the title, but some reviews proposed that Limbo had an ideal length. The title was the third-highest selling game on the Xbox Live Arcade service in 2010, generating around $7.5 million in revenue. The title won several awards from industry groups after its release, and was named as one of the top games for 2010 by several publications.
The game is presented primarily in monochromatic black-and-white tones, using lighting, film grain effects and minimal ambient sounds to create an eerie atmosphere often associated with the horror genre. Journalists praised the dark presentation, describing the work as comparable to film noir and German Expressionism. Based on its aesthetics, reviewers classified Limbo as an example of "video game as art".
Limbo received positive reviews, but was criticized for its minimal story; some critics found the open-ended work to have deeper meaning that tied well with the game's mechanics, while others believed the lack of significant plot and abrupt ending detracted from the game. A common point of criticism from reviewers was that the high cost of the game relative to its short length might deter players from purchasing the title, but some reviews proposed that Limbo had an ideal length. The title was the third-highest selling game on the Xbox Live Arcade service in 2010, generating around $7.5 million in revenue. The title won several awards from industry groups after its release, and was named as one of the top games for 2010 by several publications.
Plot
The primary character in Limbo is a nameless boy who awakens in the middle of a forest on the "edge of hell" (the game's title is taken from the Latin limbus, meaning "edge"). The boy seeks his missing sister, and encounters only a few human characters that attack or run away from him.Once during the journey, the boy catches a glimpse of a female character, but she vanishes before he can reach her.The forest eventually gives way to a crumbling city environment.On completion of the final puzzle, the boy is thrown through a pane of glass and ends up in the forest again. The boy continues traveling until he encounters a girl. When he approaches, she stands up, startled; the game abruptly ends at this point.
Gameplay
The player controls the boy for the entire game. As is typical of most two-dimensional platform games, the player can make the boy run left or right on the screen, jump, climb up short ledges or up and down ladders and ropes, and push or pull objects. The game is presented through dark, greyscale graphics and with minimalist ambient sounds, creating an eerie, haunting environment.The dark visuals also hide numerous environmental and physical traps, such as bear traps on the forest floor or monsters in the shadows that will attempt to kill the boy. These monsters include a giant spider and worms that dig into the boy's brain and force him to travel in one direction until the worms are killed.
The second half of the game features puzzles and traps involving more mechanical aspects, such as water, machinery, electromagnetism, and gravity. Many of these traps are not apparent until triggered, often killing the boy. Should this happen, the player restarts the game at the last checkpoint; there is no limit on how many times this can occur. However, the player can often avoid these traps and then use them later, such as using a bear trap to clamp onto an animal carcass at the end of a rope and pulling it taut, allowing the boy to climb up to a ledge that was otherwise out of reach. Because these traps are not known until the player activates them, the developers called the game a "trial and death" game, as the player will likely encounter numerous deaths before they solve each puzzle and complete the game. Many deaths are animated with images of dismemberment or beheading of the boy, but an optional gore filter blacks out the screen instead of showing these deaths.] Game achievements (optional in-game goals) include finding hidden insect eggs and completing the game with five or fewer deaths.
The second half of the game features puzzles and traps involving more mechanical aspects, such as water, machinery, electromagnetism, and gravity. Many of these traps are not apparent until triggered, often killing the boy. Should this happen, the player restarts the game at the last checkpoint; there is no limit on how many times this can occur. However, the player can often avoid these traps and then use them later, such as using a bear trap to clamp onto an animal carcass at the end of a rope and pulling it taut, allowing the boy to climb up to a ledge that was otherwise out of reach. Because these traps are not known until the player activates them, the developers called the game a "trial and death" game, as the player will likely encounter numerous deaths before they solve each puzzle and complete the game. Many deaths are animated with images of dismemberment or beheading of the boy, but an optional gore filter blacks out the screen instead of showing these deaths.] Game achievements (optional in-game goals) include finding hidden insect eggs and completing the game with five or fewer deaths.
Development
According to Playdead partner Dino Patti and lead designer Jeppe Carlsen, Playdead's game director, Arnt Jensen, conceived Limbo around 2004. At that time, as a concept artist at IO Interactive, Jensen became dissatisfied with the increasingly corporate nature of the company. He had sketched a "mood image" of a "secret place" to get ideas, and the result, similar to the backgrounds of the final game, inspired Jensen to expand on it.Jensen initially tried on his own to program the game in Visual Basic around 2004, but found he needed more help and proceeded to create an art style trailer by 2006. He had only intended to use the trailer as a means to recruit a programmer to help him,but the video attracted much interest in the project from across the Internet, eventually leading him to meet with Patti, who was also dissatisfied with his job.Their collaboration led to the founding of Playdead Studios.Although Patti helped in the first few months with programming, he realised that the project was much larger than what the two of them could handle, and Patti developed the business around the game's expanded development.
Initial development was funded personally by Jensen and Patti along with Danish government grants, including funding from the Nordic Game Program, while large investors were sought later in the development cycle. Jensen and Patti did not want to commit to major publishers, preferring to retain full creative control in developing the title.Jensen originally planned to release Limbo as a free Microsoft Windows title, but by this point, Jensen and Patti decided to make the game a retail title.
Playdead chose to ignore outside advice from investors and critics during development, such as the addition of multiplayer play and adjustable difficulty levels, and extending the game's length. According to Patti, Playdead felt these changes would break the integrity of Jensen's original vision. Numerous iterations of the game took place during a two-and-a-half year development cycle, including changes Jensen had demanded to polish the title. Patti stated that they "trashed 70%" of the content they had developed, due to it not fitting in well with the context of the game. The core development team size was about 8 programmers, expanding to 16 at various stages with freelancers.Playdead developed the design tools for Limbo in Visual Studio; Patti commented they would likely seek third-party applications for their next project given the challenges in creating their own technology.
Limbo was released on 21 July 2010 on the Xbox Live Arcade service, as the first title in the yearly "Summer of Arcade" promotion.Although the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) had listed entries for Limbo for the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms, Playdead confirmed that this was a mistake on ESRB's part, and that they had no plans for the game on these systems.According to producer Mads Wibroe, part of their decision not to release for the Windows platform was to avoid issues with software piracy, something they could control on the Xbox 360. Patti stated that staying exclusive with the Xbox platform was an assurance that they would be able to recoup their investment in the game's development. Patti affirmed that Limbo will not be released for another console, but that their next game, already in development as of October 2010, may see wider release.]In March 2011, an Xbox 360 retail distribution of Limbo alongside other indie games Trials HD and 'Splosion Man was announced, to be released on 19 April 2011.
Story, art and music direction
From the game's inception, Jensen set out three goals for the final Limbo product. The first goal was to create a specific mood and art style. Jensen wanted to create an aesthetic for the game without resorting to highly-detailed three-dimensional models, and instead directed the art towards a minimalistic style to allow the development to focus its attention on the gameplay.Jensen's second goal was to only require two additional controls—jumping and grabbing—outside of the normal left-and-right movement controls, to keep the game easy to play. Finally, the finished game was to present no tutorial text to the player, requiring players to learn the game's mechanics on their own.The game was purposely developed to avoid revealing details of its content; the only tagline the company provided was, "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo."This was chosen so that players could interpret the game's meaning for themselves.
Jensen drew inspiration from film genres, including works of film noir, to set the art style of the game; the team's graphic artist, Morten Bramsen, is credited with digitally recreating that art style. Much of the game's flow was storyboarded very early in development, such as the boy's encounters with spiders and mind-controlling worms, as well as the overall transition from a forest to a city, then to an abstract environment. As development progressed, some of the original ideas became too difficult for the small team to complete; originally, the spider sequences were to be present near the end of the game, but were later moved to the first part. In retrospect, Jensen was aware that the first half of the game contained more scripted events and encounters, while the second half of the game was lonelier and puzzle-heavy; Jensen attributed this to his lack of oversight during the latter stages of development.
The game's audio was created by Martin Stig Andersen, a graduate with specialization in acousmatic music from the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus.Andersen sought to create non-traditional acousmatic music exclusively incorporating the sound effects of the game's environments; one example he pointed to was the use of electricity noises while in the presence of a ruined neon "HOTEL" sign.Many reviews for the game stated that there was no music in Limbo, but Andersen countered that his sound arrangements helped to evoke emotions; the acousmatic music was intended to leave room for interpretation by the player in the same manner as the game's art and story.
Gameplay direction
Limbo was designed to avoid the pitfalls of major titles, where the same gameplay mechanic is used repeatedly. Carlsen, initially brought aboard as a programmer for the custom game engine, became the lead designer after Playdead found him to be capable at creating puzzles. Carlsen stated that the puzzles within Limbo were designed to "[keep] you guessing all the way through". Jensen also wanted to make the puzzles feel like a natural part of the environment, and to avoid the feeling that the player was simply moving from puzzle to puzzle through the course of the game. Carlsen identified examples of puzzles from other games that he wanted to avoid. He wanted to avoid simple puzzles that gave the player little satisfaction in its solution, such as a puzzle in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves that involved simply moving a sun-lit mirror to specific points in a room. In contrast, Carlsen wanted to avoid making the puzzle so complex with many separate parts that the player would resort to trial-and-error and eventually come out with the solution without thinking about why the solution worked; Carlsen used an example of a puzzle from the 2008 Prince of Persia game that had seven different mechanics that he never bothered to figure out himself. Carlsen designed LimboTemplate:'s puzzles to fall between these limits, demonstrating one puzzle that only has three elements: a switch panel, an electrified floor, and a chain; the goal—to use the chain to cross the electrified floor—is immediately obvious to the player, and then tasks the player to determine the right combination of moves and timing to complete it safely.The decision to provide little information to the player was an initial challenge in creating the game. Early playtesters would have no idea of how to solve certain puzzles. To improve this, they created scenarios before troublesome spots that highlighted the appropriate actions; for example, when they found players did not think about pulling a boat onto shore to use as a platform to reach a higher ledge, they presented the player with a box-pulling puzzle earlier to demonstrate the pulling mechanics.
The team developed the game's puzzles by first assuming the player was their "worst enemy", and made puzzles as devious as possible, but then scaled back their difficulty or added visual and audible aids as if the player was a friend. One example given by Carlsen is a puzzle involving a spider early in the game; the solution requires pushing a bear trap to snare the spider's legs in it. Early designs of this puzzle had the bear trap on the same screen as the spider, and Playdead found playtesters focused too much on the trap. The developers altered the puzzle to put the trap in a tree in an earlier off-screen section when facing the spider; the spider's actions would eventually cause this trap to drop to the ground and become a weapon against the spider. Carlsen stated that this arrangement created a situation where the player felt helpless when initially presented with the deadly spider, but then assisted the player through an audible cue when the trap had dropped, enabling the player to discover the solution.
Playdead included gruesome death sequences to highlight incorrect solutions and discourage players from repeating their mistakes. While they expected players to run the boy into numerous deaths while trying solutions, Carlsen stated that their goal was to ensure death wasn't a penalty in the game, and made the death animations entertaining to keep the player interested.Carlsen noted several early puzzles were too complex for the game, but they would end up using a portion of these larger puzzles in the final release.
Initial development was funded personally by Jensen and Patti along with Danish government grants, including funding from the Nordic Game Program, while large investors were sought later in the development cycle. Jensen and Patti did not want to commit to major publishers, preferring to retain full creative control in developing the title.Jensen originally planned to release Limbo as a free Microsoft Windows title, but by this point, Jensen and Patti decided to make the game a retail title.
Playdead chose to ignore outside advice from investors and critics during development, such as the addition of multiplayer play and adjustable difficulty levels, and extending the game's length. According to Patti, Playdead felt these changes would break the integrity of Jensen's original vision. Numerous iterations of the game took place during a two-and-a-half year development cycle, including changes Jensen had demanded to polish the title. Patti stated that they "trashed 70%" of the content they had developed, due to it not fitting in well with the context of the game. The core development team size was about 8 programmers, expanding to 16 at various stages with freelancers.Playdead developed the design tools for Limbo in Visual Studio; Patti commented they would likely seek third-party applications for their next project given the challenges in creating their own technology.
Limbo was released on 21 July 2010 on the Xbox Live Arcade service, as the first title in the yearly "Summer of Arcade" promotion.Although the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) had listed entries for Limbo for the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms, Playdead confirmed that this was a mistake on ESRB's part, and that they had no plans for the game on these systems.According to producer Mads Wibroe, part of their decision not to release for the Windows platform was to avoid issues with software piracy, something they could control on the Xbox 360. Patti stated that staying exclusive with the Xbox platform was an assurance that they would be able to recoup their investment in the game's development. Patti affirmed that Limbo will not be released for another console, but that their next game, already in development as of October 2010, may see wider release.]In March 2011, an Xbox 360 retail distribution of Limbo alongside other indie games Trials HD and 'Splosion Man was announced, to be released on 19 April 2011.
Story, art and music direction
From the game's inception, Jensen set out three goals for the final Limbo product. The first goal was to create a specific mood and art style. Jensen wanted to create an aesthetic for the game without resorting to highly-detailed three-dimensional models, and instead directed the art towards a minimalistic style to allow the development to focus its attention on the gameplay.Jensen's second goal was to only require two additional controls—jumping and grabbing—outside of the normal left-and-right movement controls, to keep the game easy to play. Finally, the finished game was to present no tutorial text to the player, requiring players to learn the game's mechanics on their own.The game was purposely developed to avoid revealing details of its content; the only tagline the company provided was, "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo."This was chosen so that players could interpret the game's meaning for themselves.
Jensen drew inspiration from film genres, including works of film noir, to set the art style of the game; the team's graphic artist, Morten Bramsen, is credited with digitally recreating that art style. Much of the game's flow was storyboarded very early in development, such as the boy's encounters with spiders and mind-controlling worms, as well as the overall transition from a forest to a city, then to an abstract environment. As development progressed, some of the original ideas became too difficult for the small team to complete; originally, the spider sequences were to be present near the end of the game, but were later moved to the first part. In retrospect, Jensen was aware that the first half of the game contained more scripted events and encounters, while the second half of the game was lonelier and puzzle-heavy; Jensen attributed this to his lack of oversight during the latter stages of development.
The game's audio was created by Martin Stig Andersen, a graduate with specialization in acousmatic music from the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus.Andersen sought to create non-traditional acousmatic music exclusively incorporating the sound effects of the game's environments; one example he pointed to was the use of electricity noises while in the presence of a ruined neon "HOTEL" sign.Many reviews for the game stated that there was no music in Limbo, but Andersen countered that his sound arrangements helped to evoke emotions; the acousmatic music was intended to leave room for interpretation by the player in the same manner as the game's art and story.
Gameplay direction
Limbo was designed to avoid the pitfalls of major titles, where the same gameplay mechanic is used repeatedly. Carlsen, initially brought aboard as a programmer for the custom game engine, became the lead designer after Playdead found him to be capable at creating puzzles. Carlsen stated that the puzzles within Limbo were designed to "[keep] you guessing all the way through". Jensen also wanted to make the puzzles feel like a natural part of the environment, and to avoid the feeling that the player was simply moving from puzzle to puzzle through the course of the game. Carlsen identified examples of puzzles from other games that he wanted to avoid. He wanted to avoid simple puzzles that gave the player little satisfaction in its solution, such as a puzzle in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves that involved simply moving a sun-lit mirror to specific points in a room. In contrast, Carlsen wanted to avoid making the puzzle so complex with many separate parts that the player would resort to trial-and-error and eventually come out with the solution without thinking about why the solution worked; Carlsen used an example of a puzzle from the 2008 Prince of Persia game that had seven different mechanics that he never bothered to figure out himself. Carlsen designed LimboTemplate:'s puzzles to fall between these limits, demonstrating one puzzle that only has three elements: a switch panel, an electrified floor, and a chain; the goal—to use the chain to cross the electrified floor—is immediately obvious to the player, and then tasks the player to determine the right combination of moves and timing to complete it safely.The decision to provide little information to the player was an initial challenge in creating the game. Early playtesters would have no idea of how to solve certain puzzles. To improve this, they created scenarios before troublesome spots that highlighted the appropriate actions; for example, when they found players did not think about pulling a boat onto shore to use as a platform to reach a higher ledge, they presented the player with a box-pulling puzzle earlier to demonstrate the pulling mechanics.
The team developed the game's puzzles by first assuming the player was their "worst enemy", and made puzzles as devious as possible, but then scaled back their difficulty or added visual and audible aids as if the player was a friend. One example given by Carlsen is a puzzle involving a spider early in the game; the solution requires pushing a bear trap to snare the spider's legs in it. Early designs of this puzzle had the bear trap on the same screen as the spider, and Playdead found playtesters focused too much on the trap. The developers altered the puzzle to put the trap in a tree in an earlier off-screen section when facing the spider; the spider's actions would eventually cause this trap to drop to the ground and become a weapon against the spider. Carlsen stated that this arrangement created a situation where the player felt helpless when initially presented with the deadly spider, but then assisted the player through an audible cue when the trap had dropped, enabling the player to discover the solution.
Playdead included gruesome death sequences to highlight incorrect solutions and discourage players from repeating their mistakes. While they expected players to run the boy into numerous deaths while trying solutions, Carlsen stated that their goal was to ensure death wasn't a penalty in the game, and made the death animations entertaining to keep the player interested.Carlsen noted several early puzzles were too complex for the game, but they would end up using a portion of these larger puzzles in the final release.