Limbo: A game of darkness

Limbo title

The two games I discussed last week were of the bright and cheery variety. This week I want to touch on how games don’t need to be bright colors or interesting materials like Claymation to be artistic. If we make a comparison to Picasso’s Guernica, pieces of art can be equally haunting and awe inspiring at the same time. The game I believe encapsulates this image in a unrealistic setting would be Limbo. Limbo is this frightfully 2D platformer created by Playdead, and I think it as the first true piece of video game art I have laid eyes upon. It has a story hidden behind the simplistic dark visuals and engaging gameplay. These three topics make it quite simply a beautiful piece of work.

limbo city

First off the visuals. Limbo is painted entirely in black and white. Every object in the game is created as a silhouette, which paints this grim and barren world in dark colors of obscurity. The main characters bright eyes stand out as he wanders the dusty forest in the first half of the game. The entire time he is attempting to escape a giant spider that sole adjective is to kill the young boy. The grey background makes the world of Limbo mysterious and alien, exactly how it acts in a game design sense and the story that complements it.

limbo gruesome

The story of Limbo isn’t explicitly stated, but from subtle clues in the game we can infer the basis of the story. The title insinuates that the game takes place in some sort of purgatory on the edge of hell, limbo to be precise. As all of the characters in the game are young children, the Limbo in question is probably Limbo of the Infants, a section of hell that unbaptized infants are sent to after they die. This makes the dark colors and emptiness important to demonstrate a sense of loss and loneliness. The game starts in a forest but slowly moves into an abandoned city area with machines and other scavenging youngsters. The final piece of the game is when the main character crashes through a window and encounters another girl laying on the ground; similar to the way the game begins with the original character. This open-ended climax leaves the finishing touches of the story up to the player.

limbo boat

The dark, simplistic coloring also has a presence in the gameplay as well. The game only has two buttons: Jump and Interact. The game gives no instructions at all, but because you only have two buttons to work with, it’s not impossible to derive the solutions to different situations. Also, the game WANTS to kill you. When you die, the game portrays it in some gruesome way so you wont do it again. The game uses a technique that is popular in game design that is called trial and error. This gameplay is especially effective as it makes the puzzles more satisfying to solve because they begin with failure before you officially succeed.

solution limbo

One solution involves using a bear trap in order to move the spider

The game is so entrancing in these aspects that make it truly a work of art in its medium. There are so many memorable moments, from the spider chase to the first death you encounter that leave certain emotions in your mind. The simplistic style and interesting use of darkness also place this game in its own unique category.

Click here for death

Click here for death

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3 thoughts on “Limbo: A game of darkness

  1. Whenever I think of Limbo, the first immediate parallelism that I think of is that of Darksouls. You said that the game WANTS to kill you, and its that visceral feeling that really brings out a good deal of emotion. With this game, its not a self-propagating fear and frustration, it instead is poignant because it focuses on the art of exploration instead. The lack of color allows for the player to fill in the gaps of emotion with their own interpretations, making the game variant rather than linear. Everyone’s view is unique based on their own presuppositions. Nothing more to say, this is great.

    • Yeah I wanted to make a Dark Souls comparison the entire time I was writing this. In reality, Dark Souls is sort of a 3d action/RPG version of the 2d platformer/puzzler of Limbo. Both exist as dark games that place you in some hellish location where death is impossible and the only option is to continue to trek forward looking for solutions to where you went wrong on your last attempt.

  2. I love your comparison between the game and Picasso’s Guernica! Both seem very haunting. The photos you chose really bring out the personality of the game and make it seem more enticing to non-gamers.

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