Limbo First Look

Limbo is a concept that began six years ago and recently won awards for visual and technical excellence at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards. This striking black-and-white puzzle platformer is a tense and sometimes heart-pounding journey into a strange world where a young boy searches desperately for his sister. The game seems innocent enough at first, as you begin the game in a forest and the only sounds are the shuffling of your feet and the distant howl of the wind. The difficulty ramps up though, and the world is not as isolated as it seems.

As the boy, you're nothing but a silhouette with two bright white eyes that stand out against the misty background. Like a traditional platformer, you're moving from left to right most of the time and you use the A button to jump and the X button to pull objects. What's interesting is that the game isn't split into levels, so there are no load screens after you start the game. There are frequent checkpoints in case you die, and you'll likely die quite often, but it's forgiving because you're never bumped back very far. The game is broken into chapters from the main menu, so after you've completed a portion of the game, you can jump around the different areas. But as you're playing Limbo, it's like a never-ending dream...or nightmare.

Puzzles involve figuring out what to do with the objects in your environment, whether it's pulling a switch to raise the water level or using a rope to pull down a log. Timing can be crucial as well because you can fall into plenty of traps. New mechanics will be introduced as you progress through the game. For example, we came across a glow worm that attached itself to our head, which forced us to continuously move in one direction and the only controls we had were to walk slow or walk fast. By moving under a light, the worm will fizzle and have a fit, forcing you to switch directions. At one point, we got caught in a spider's web, and when the spider returned, it spun a silk cocoon around us. We were able to get away, but because we were shrouded in the spider's silk, our moves were limited to little baby jumps until we got the web off. Our demo started off in a dark, creepy, and painfully still forest but jumped into a later level that was more industrial, with large gears, levers, and switches. The grating sound of grinding gears and saws were enough to keep us tense and focused on staying alive.

The atmosphere stands out the most, and the highlights of the game are the visuals and sound design. As you jog through the dismal landscape, leaping over bear traps and chasms, it sounds and feels as though you are truly alone--at least up until you come across silhouettes of other people who have created elaborate traps to stop you. But even then, they scurry away before you even get a chance to get close, and you're left with nothing but your wits and basic abilities to make it out alive. Giant spiders with grotesquely long legs will impale you if you aren't careful, and bear traps will snap you into pieces like a thin cracker. Even though you're nothing but a silhouette, the various creative death animations can be gruesome to watch. Impaling yourself on a branch, falling onto a circular saw, or getting squashed on a conveyer belt are just some of the painful ways to go. But what comes after that is what will make you squirm, whether it's seeing the leftover black goop on the machines or watching the boy's head fly off in the opposite direction of his legs.

Every once in awhile, we came across a fluttering butterfly and for one brief moment, an image of a young girl, which reminded us of why we were going through all these dangerous hoops in the first place. There is no narration, no voices, and very minimal music, so it truly feels like you're navigating through a gloomy painting taking one careful step at a time. Limbo is set to be released sometime this summer on the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace. We'll be sure to update you with more information as soon as it becomes available.