Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: Superliminal
Developer: Pillow Castle
Publisher: Pillow Castle
Genre: First-Person Puzzle
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: July 07, 2020
Price: $19.99
I remember when I was in college, I got fascinated by the works of MC Escher, whose works include bizarre, mind-bending illustrations of forced perspectives, impossible figures, and other out-of-this world dream-like scenarios. I can't draw or paint to save my life but I do appreciate art from time to time, and MC Escher's works really impressed me. Probably not enough for me to study art in college, but still, really impressed. A few years after my graduation in college, Christopher Nolan's magnum opus, Inception, came along, featuring lucid dreams and the power one can have while dreaming, and also featuring some of the best visual effects and imagery put to film. That scene where an entire street bends and folds on itself, just fantastic.
Fast forward to now, I get the chance to play a game that I didn't think will really tickle my fancy much but eventually put my problem-solving skills to the test. The game is Superliminal from the developers Pillow Castle, and it is a first-person puzzle game that involves using forced perspectives and optical illusions to solve puzzles. The game is presented quite unassumingly quaint at first, and yet, things build up and get more and more complex the further you progress into it. The visuals, graphically, don't look too remarkable, but they are well-presented and executed. The music is also excellent, consisting simple, mostly piano-based jazz elevator music but eventually leads way to other genres, such as electronica and orchestral music.
In this game you play an unnamed individual in first person view. You are at the Pierce Institute, about to take part in SomnaSculpt, a state-of-the-art dream therapy program. You are already asleep and in a lucid dream, the kind of dream where you know you are dreaming and can control your surroundings. After a brief introduction from Dr. Glenn Pierce, the head of Pierce Institute, explaining to you what SomnaSculpt is, a female voice greets you and make you sign the Terms of Service of the program, and you are soon given the rules. The main rule is you can use force perspective to solve puzzles: you can make objects appear bigger or smaller depending on how you look at them in respect to the surrounding. The big caveat is the objects DO become bigger or smaller for real after you place them on the ground or on whichever surface that you need to put them. By aligning seemingly disparate lines or shapes into completely new ones, you get to open up new pathways or make new objects appear. Not all objects can be interacted with, though, so another part of puzzle-solving is to find such objects or find patterns in your surroundings to make them appear. When you hover on an object that you can interact with, the little circle that acts like a cross hair in the middle of the screen becomes a hand icon, and that signifies that you can pick it up. Once an object gets picked up, you can then rotate it around depending on how you will use it, and then you have to use forced perspective on it to make it bigger or smaller. You can make new platforms appear that will allow you to reach doors that hang a few feet from the floor or a big object to press switches with or break walls, etc. You will also have to deal with doors that lead to another area through another door and they can loop with each other, and since you can make these doors physically big or small, if you pass through them, you become big or small as well, creating additional challenges and even paradoxes at times. Yes, your head will spin on this game, and you have to make sure not to get left behind.
The game is divided into 9 levels, each with its own theme, like one is about making things bigger or smaller, one about lights and shadows, one about cloning objects, etc. The goal for each chapter is to reach an elevator that signify your gradual "waking up" from your lucid dream. At the start of (almost) each level, you get waken up by an alarm clock that you need to turn off in order for you to leave the room and deal with the puzzles that await you. As you progress into the game, the puzzles become more and more complex. There are chapters where it seems that all the rules established from the previous chapters get thrown out of the window and new ones get created on the fly while rooms get turned upside down or crumble on itself and it is up to you to figure them out using all the skills that you learned previously. They are awesome and fantastic and a bit scary at times, because you may feel trapped and disoriented due to the lack of clear indication on what you need to do to get past the puzzles. At one point, I felt like being trapped in some David Lynch movie and felt like going insane… that is, until I get to figure out what to do next and continue with my journey.
You get to hear the female voice from time to time to give you some insights about the program. Also, throughout the game, you will see boom boxes that if you choose to play, you will hear Dr. Glenn Pierce's voice, giving you some feedback about your performance so far and additional encouraging words to make you keep on keeping on.
Overall, Superluminal is one outstanding game with unique gameplay mechanics, presented in such a way that doesn't only challenge you mentally but also touch you emotionally within in quite surprising ways. There will be times when you will just feel lost and confused and going insane with the barrage of visual eccentricities from the puzzles thrown at you by the game, but you will eventually get to solve them and the feeling of such accomplishments is really satisfying. The game is short and can actually be finished in one sitting, depending on how you quickly you process visual cues and solve the puzzles, but it also ideal for short play sessions, either docked or in handheld mode on the Switch. The game has an achievement system with a good number of challenges that you can try to accomplish, thus encouraging you to play more and go back to previous levels. So, if you are a fan of puzzles and maybe art in general, this game is highly recommended to you. But even if not, this game is still very much worth your time to play, because it is really satisfyingly good and will challenge you in ways that you probably have not been challenged before in a video game. If you decide to play the game, good luck, and play it to the satisfying end. This game is fantastic from beginning to end, and it is waiting for you to play and experience it.
REPLAY VALUE: High
PROS
- Outstanding aesthetics and gameplay
- Excellent musical score, ranging from simple elevator music to electronica to jazz and other musical awesomeness in between
- Challenging puzzles that vary from simple to really mind-bending, forcing you to really think out of the box
- Evenly paced for the most part
- Various achievements encourage you to play levels and the entire game multiple times, such as activating fire alarms, emptying fire extinguishers, beating the game in less than 30 mins, etc.
- Satisfyingly good ending
CONS
- Very short for its asking price, and since the puzzles don't get randomized, the overall charm of its unique gameplay only really work particularly well on the first playthrough
- Some framerate dips and glitches happen, albeit infrequently
RATING: 4.5/5 mind bends and paradoxes
No comments:
Post a Comment