2021-10-10 - Superliminal

Superliminal is a short puzzle game based on perspective.

At the very beginning, I was amazed by the potential endless great puzzles that would come out of this basic ideas: things can have different usages and different sizes depending on your perspective. Isn't it amazing? Remember how great Portal was, just with teleportation?

Anyway, at first the game is okay and simple enough. You make small items big to go through rooms. With the right angle a painting can become a live object. At this point it's a fine puzzle game, but I didn't find it outstanding either.

Then it gets worst. I felt like there was a lot a texture testing trying to go through, which is usually a sign that I'm not really enjoying myself. It goes along with an old point & click vibe, trying to find out which item transforms the mouse pointer into a hand. And finally, the last part of the game might have been enjoyable with acids, but the texture-less walk around seemed lazy. There isn't much puzzle gaming at this point either.

It should be noted that this game is not beautiful nor graphically original either. It looks like my attempts at playing with the Unreal Engine editor.

Also, the story fits well with what's going on, so you don't go over levels without any context, but it's anecdotal.

Overall, it's an okay game, and it's fine because it's pretty short, so you can enjoy it on a Sunday morning as I did. But it's not great either and could be forgotten easily.

Note that it had a fair success, especially for a puzzle game.