(Reseña sacada de mi cuenta de Steam: APolChrome)

Superliminal es increíble. Igual has leído eso con voz eufórica, pero no me refería a eso. Es increíble por sorprender sin mucho espacio para hacerlo. Así es como debería ser un juego de puzzles: una premisa muy original, que la llevan en una campaña corta y que expande su contenido con más niveles. Superliminal es tan bueno que siento que debería jugar más para escribir esto aun habiéndome pasado la campaña principal. Ahora sí, hablemos de este juego.

Superliminal nos presenta un juego de puzzles que juega con la realidad. Así dicho sonará extraño, pero hace una cantidad de puzzles muy grande basándose en esta mecánica, aunque tengo que poner ejemplos para que se entienda. Cosas como (ojo si no quieres spoilearte hermoso) hacer que de un dibujo salga ese mismo objeto, cambiar el tamaño de los objetos dependiendo de la distancia a la que los dejes... Una cantidad muy buena de puzzles que no se sienten repetitivos.

El juego es corto, pero sabe ser lo suficientemente difícil como para que no te lo pases en 30 minutos a la primera y además hay mucho más contenido que si bien no he jugado, me llama mucho la atención y sin duda, intentaré pasarlo todo. Si bien el juego mantiene una estructura similar, los últimos 15-20 minutos son una ida de olla espectacular y que no decepcionará a nadie seguro.

Audiovisualmente es muy bueno. Me ha sorprendido que tenga gráficos tan detallados para ser un indie de un estudio muy pequeño (porque no se suelen usar estilos artísticos parecidos). La OST está muy bien y hay algunos tracks que son excelentes, aunque no es en lo que más destaca el juego.

Narrativamente, también es una ida de olla. En este sentido me ha recordado mucho a una película que me encanta llamada Inception, que tiene exactamente la misma temática. Básicamente, estamos en un sueño todo el rato y tendremos que despertar. Pero por el camino las cosas se tuercen, dando una experiencia como pocos videojuegos pueden ofrecer.

En conclusión, Incept... quiero decir Superliminal me parece un juegazo que aunque parezca que no merezca la pena el precio, sí lo hace. Es una experiencia como ninguna otra en esta industria y no va a dejarte indiferente. Recomendadísimo

This game is good. I think the thing I kinda liked about it the most was the messaging though?

I played it at a bad time in my life and it was very odd because as cool as the concept is, the narrative is directly related to it at all times and it has this overall meaning that's. Refreshing.

Also I listen to some of the music in this game constantly, 2 Mello rocks.

This solidifies itself as the most important game to me because it is the game that launched me into gaming as an adult hobby in the fall of 2021. At the time, my partner and I were long-distance and alternating free weekends at each other's places. Hi Zach :)

Zach is and has been a big fan of playing games and I, having been interested myself but unsure of where to start, begun to show more interest in sharing this hobby. Of course, we started by playing Mario Kart/Mario Party together, before graduating to Overcooked and It Takes Two. I also spent time watching him play Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley and seeing the joy/excitement/relaxation these titles brought him, I wanted to find that for myself too!

At the time, he was also working long days on most weekends... so I often had time to fill during the days I visited. One weekend, he downloaded Superliminal for me to try out while he was gone. I felt so special that he thought of me and set up this cozy day for me. I LOVED it. I played it in one sitting and then immediately started a replay with the overlayed commentary.

This is less of a review and more of a retelling to as why this game is so meaningful for ME, but seriously, it is so good. You should go play it.

A note - as someone that experiences motion sickness while playing first person perspective, I also appreciated being able to alter the FOV and go at my own pace. That is so important.


EDIT - Can someone tell me why under the genre section of the game page on here it is listed as a "shooter"????

Amor genuíno por esse jogo ❤️

Portal e The Stanley Parable saíram para um encontro, resolveram ir ao cinema para assitir o filme "A Origem", após a sessão eles acasalaram loucamente e então nasceu Superliminal!

E pensar que eu quase dropei por bugar no primeiro puzzle, que terrível erro eu faria, mas com calma eu fui avançando e me impressionado com tudo o que ele tem a oferecer, a forma como ele vai brincando com a ilusão de ótica e a sua percepção é incrível, sem contar que as vezes os problemas são resolvidos de uma maneira ridícula de simples porém sempre genial.

Fico imaginando o trabalho absurdo que deu fazer o código e toda a parte técnica do jogo, já que em alguns momentos você tem um cenário móvel dentro de outro e PELO AMOR DE DEUS ISSO ME QUEBROU (perdão)

Tantos momentos incríveis, os loopings no quarto, as mudanças sutis no cenário, esse jazz calmo e maravilhoso que toca de fundo e a capacidade extrema de te surpreender mesmo que você tente adivinhar o que vai vir ou de onde.

E a reta final é maravilhosa, os locutores se contradizendo nas mensagens e instruções, os painéis mudando a mensagem exibida até chegar o ponto de ter apenas um "WAKE UP!", sem contar o retorno até o ponto inicial do game como se fosse um túnel do tempo com aquela bela mensagem, foi muito emocionante.

Enfim, certamente a melhor experiência Indie que eu já tive em muito tempo, espero poder encontrar obras tão incríveis quanto mesmo sendo tão curta.

Obrigado por sonhar! 😴

REVIEW ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AND POSTED ON JANUARY 2ND 2023

I took this game as a suggestion from a good friend of mine. He doesn’t play games avidly, but he had some good words to say regarding Superliminal, and I just so happened to find it was on sale.

I didn’t really know what I was walking into with Superliminal, the game really went under my radar, I think that I might have seen about a second clip of one of the first rooms with the giant chess pieces and that was about it. All that I knew going into it was that it was a puzzle game, and that part on top of my pals comment is really what caught me with this game.

When the game starts, you’re greeted with your traditional set of hallways, creating some space between the starting point, and the first puzzle. Well, I don’t even know if it was a puzzle, because what I didn’t know was that I could grab that chess piece from the opposite side of the room and then suddenly make it MASSIVE. I just walked past it, and the game was like “by the way…”. The main gimmick of Superliminal is to play around with the interactable items in the levels, and use depth perception to create platforms and traverse through the rooms of the institute, eventually finding your own path, and breaking the flow that the curators have intended for you, eventually twisting the “reality” that’s been created for you.

With each chapter, it starts very similarly, waking up to an alarm clock, the time progressing with every revisit, and the scenery making a change with it. You might revisit the institution from the first lap, or you might find yourself as a guest to a luxurious dinner hall. I think that one of the best parts about the level design with this game, which goes hand-in-hand with the overall moral of the game, and it creates an entirely fresh scenario, which nearly brings it into a psychological horror realm of freaky when you throw in the audio design, and the use of dimming the lights in what I think was a recreation of one of the very first stages, suddenly it became my favorite section in the game.

I can speak plenty of praises on the overall design of the game, and I’ve spoken some praises on the use of depth perception in this game, but playing the whole game in one sitting might have soured my stance on it when you ONLY really solve puzzles with depth perception, and often the same type of puzzle. Doing the same tricks to solve very similar puzzles became tedious approaching the halfway point in this game, but luckily, there is a redemption period of the game, being able to manipulate the players size in order to solve the puzzles using a loop of doorways was a nice little wrench in the works to keep me interested until the very end.

As I mentioned, the moral of the story falls into place with the puzzles that you solve in the game, as well as the story that the game tells you in the background over the speakers and radios in the game, but if you’re looking to give this game a try, I shall leave it ambiguous, and up to you to play the game yourself to discover what I mean.

Superliminal is a nice puzzle game experience that you can either pad out for the long haul, or decide to speedrun your way through, as the game developers seem to encourage. The game gets a 5/10 from me right now, and should I decide to run for the platinum, it’ll receive a ridiculous amount of chess pieces later…