SUPERLIMINAL STORY HOW TO

If you’re watching science fiction, you expect spaceships and technology. When we talk about genre, we’re really talking about the expectations that the audience brings to a piece of fiction. How does fiction move between moods? How do you handle that kind of shift in a way that’s compelling rather than jarring? Is there something that we can identify Superliminal as potentially missing, something that can help us understand genre and mood more broadly? Part of the initial conversation would have to be about expectation. It’s a bit of a mood shift – which is not bad, necessarily, but it’s definitely – it’s noticeable.īut okay, let’s stay with that for a minute.

SUPERLIMINAL STORY HOW TO

The story’s got kind of a Portal thing going, too – you’re a dreamer who’s accidentally stumbled into a sleep therapy dream, and nobody totally knows where you are or how to get you out, and when they do figure it out the computer turns on you and won’t let you escape – Portal vibes, right? And yet by the end of the game, you’re listening to rising strings, those soft angelic sounds that signal transcendence and enlightenment, while a doctor tells you how you’ve successfully overcome your self-doubt and proven your ability to cope in the world. Following in the footsteps of Demruth’s 2013 Antichamber, it features puzzles based around forced-perspective. Superliminal is a game you can pick up and play in a single sitting, and it will deliver “how the fuck did they do that?” surprises over and over.Superliminal is a 2019 surreal puzzle game from Pillow Castle. I intentionally avoided talking about 90% of what makes this game special because, genuine criticisms aside, I truly loved playing it. It may fail as a story, but it excels as an interactive magic show. But as a video game, you can ignore the larger story and have a fantastic time. As a piece of art, Superliminal isn’t a cohesive success. The result is one of those classic game criticism conundrums. Superliminal attempts to impart a larger lesson on the player before the end, but that lesson doesn’t vibe with the gameplay as much as the developers probably intended. “We crammed a story into our puzzle game-check!” This isn’t uncommon-many puzzle game stories feel like an afterthought-but it would have been nice to see a stronger marriage of gameplay and themes.Īs it stands, while there are some cool bits of environmental storytelling, the dialogue feels too much like a forced attempt at dry British humour™ to really stand out. Ultimately, the story of Superliminal feels more like a checked box than a strong concept.

It’s an interesting idea that falls flat. It’s not long before it seems like something has gone wrong with the study and your goal becomes a desperate escape from your own mind. And things only get wilder from there.Īll along the way, you’re told that you are a participant in some new form of sleep therapy, delving deeper into dreams in order to come out the other side a better person. It lets you shrink a normal-sized crate down to dollhouse-size in order to fit it through a gap, pressing a pressure plate in another room. It allows you to take a tiny rubber duck, hold it close to your face so it looks gigantic in the environment, and then send a giant rubber monstrosity crashing to the ground.

That forced perspective concept is at the heart of Superliminal. Have you ever sat across from someone and squinted your eyes while holding up your thumb and forefinger so it looks like you’re squishing their tiny head? Have you ever held a small object in such a way that at just the right angle it looks massive? How about those lame tourism photos where everyone uses forced perspective to make it look like they’re holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa? No, not like that. “Perception is reality.” Not only was this statement part of the advertising, but it also comes up again and again throughout the game’s world. But to give you an idea, I’ll explain one of the opening puzzles and one of the game’s key mechanics… I hesitate to say much at all about what the puzzles entail, because so much of this game is about that initial novelty. The designers anticipate what you will do and what you will try, and their goal is to surprise and delight you with some wild optical illusions. Seriously though, most of the puzzles feel like being called up on stage from the audience of a magic show. When a puzzle is solved in Superliminal, it often feels like a magic trick.

Superliminal doesn’t make you feel unintelligent, but the give and take between the player and the game is completely different. “Every time I solved a puzzle I felt like a genius,” was a common talking point. It was praised for how it empowered the player. In Portal, solving a puzzle felt like gears clicking into place. Superliminal is a Portal-esque puzzle game that completely reverses that game’s fundamental conceit.

Superliminal story