A spectacular experience that will suck you in and remain in your memory forever.
The game opens with a black and white forest fading into view. There`s some big trees in the background. Tall grass is growing out of the ground, and rays of sun light are seeping through the branches. You don`t know what to do, so you start to press the movement keys, and suddenly, two shining eyes appears withing the grass, and you realize that there`s a small boy laying on the ground. A moment later he stands up and then you take control.
You have no idea how you got there, but you keep walking forward anyway. And soon enough, you discover you`re not alone in this place. There`s a dangerous creature lurking in the darkness, and there`s even other people, but they aren`t exactly very welcoming about your presence in their forest. So now your main objective is to survive, and try to get out of there.
Controls are really simple. You just use the arrow keys for movement, and the ctrl key for grabbing objects and using buttons or levers. Most of the game consists of you solving puzzles to continue forward. And the great thing here, is that all those puzzles actually make sense within the game world, and not just "solve this chess puzzle and the door in the next room will open" like in some games these days. Their difficulty gradually increases as you advance through the game, but they never actually get difficult.
Limbo isn`t divided into levels or chapters, and there`s no loading screens to break your immersion from this amazing dream like experience. Through the whole game, you will be moving from left to right. However at some points you`ll need to backtrack because of certain stuff or obstacles blocking your way forward. While most of the game is easy, you`ll find yourself repeating some areas over and over. Because all sorts of unexpected things can happen, like a massive rock that comes rolling down a hill towards you, the ground breaking beneath you, or spiked traps swinging from trees to tear you apart. Thankfully the check point system is very forgiving, so you usually respawn only a few steps from where you died.
As you go on, several new gameplay mechanics gets introduced. Like switches that turns the gravity upside down, magnetic ceilings that pulls metal objects upwards, and brain slugs that attaches themselves to your head and forces you to keep moving in one direction. You won`t spend the whole game in a forest, you`ll also go through an underground industrial area. Where instead of trees and sunlight, you`ll find darkness and moving chainsaws.
The ending is as strange as everything else in the game. It doesn`t really explain anything, except in a really vague way. So it`s up to the player`s interpretation to decide what the whole journey meant.
Limbo is a game that you must try. It doesn`t matter whether you like platformers and puzzle games or not. Because it`s is simply one of the best gaming experiences you`ll ever have.