Superliminal is a physics-based puzzle game with a lot of unique and surprising mechanics that I’ve never experienced in anything else I’ve played before. However, in some ways, it feels more like a tech demo than a game. It’s a hodgepodge of interesting ideas that don’t really make a coherent experience. I feel like there was a lot of potential for Superliminal to be something more impressive than it currently is. Upon completing it, it fails to leave much of an impact, despite clearly attempting to do so.

Writing about how this game’s mechanics work is a huge pain because they’re really difficult to put into words. Essentially, the game is about utilizing your visual perspective to manipulate objects and the environment to solve puzzles. For example, one of the earliest things you can do in the game is increase or decrease the size of objects by moving them closer or farther away from you. You can then use those objects as platforms or move them over walls. This is just one of the many perspective-based mechanics that the game utilizes. These mechanics are very cool when experiencing them for the first time. I definitely said “wow” and “woah” out loud as I experimented and learned about how they worked as well as what I could do with them. The problem is that as the game goes on, these mechanics are constantly discarded without ever being expanded upon. As a result, nothing really leaves a lasting impression in this game. I feel like I’m at a funhouse at an amusement park when I play Superliminal, constantly switching from one neat looking attraction to the other.

The game does have a story, but it doesn’t go anywhere or have anything really interesting to say. Its key message falls flat because it’s meant to coincide with the developers’ assumed difficulty of the game. The thing is, the game isn’t really hard, and it’s super short. As a result, the core theme of the story just feels like preachy rhetoric. It comes off as desperately wanting to leave some sort of emotional impact on the player, but its attempts to do so just don’t really pan out. There are sections of the game that have some darker narrative implications and the game does a great job at setting up a tense atmosphere during these sections, to the point where they border on horror. But these sections never go anywhere beyond presenting new mechanics, and as a result, they’re discarded and abandoned alongside them.

Superliminal just feels like a presentation of neat ideas and that’s about it. Since it doesn’t really push its mechanics beyond just figuring out how they work, nothing really sticks with you after having played it. This combined with its low difficulty and short playtime causes it to feel like a game that you just quickly move on from. It isn’t memorable beyond the novelty of its mechanics. It’s a decent way to kill two hours, and that’s pretty much the extent of what I can say about it.

Me when the Stanley Parable and Portal: :-O
The first part of the game is almost flawless with great puzzles and flow to it. Perhaps, they were too easy to solve but I didn't mind it. The second half is what kinda ruined the experience for me. The logic of puzzles suddenly lost its integrity and instead of actually keeping this natural flow, the developers decided to throw in a couple of puzzles, in which their solution was almost random. This is where the game started to get boring for me. In the final part of the game, I was just walking mostly solving unimaginative puzzles while the game was trying to compensate it with its visuals. I barely cared about the message tbh, mainly because it is in itself not the most original one, and the delivery struggled because of the conflict between game design and gameplay.
I believe this game and its concept had tremendous potential, but just tripped over the pretentious narrative.
Grade: 6/10

Superliminal é um jogo em primeira-pessoa de puzzle bem diferenciado. Ele utiliza o tempo ilusões de ótica e muitas vezes se inspira em geometria não-euclidiana, tornando ele um jogo bizarro mas intrigante.

Como o jogo é focado em solução de puzzle, logo é de se imaginar que a todo momento, durante todo o jogo, você estará resolvendo puzzles dos mais variados tipos. E sim, isso ocorre em Superliminal. Porém, o jogo não é apenas sobre isso.

Superliminal traz consigo um enredo que não só explora os sonhos (toda a jornada do protagonista no jogo acontece em sonhos), mas também traz reflexão para o protagonista e ao próprio jogador sobre a vida e o papel de cada um no mundo real.

Assim, haverão momentos em que o jogador (na pele do protagonista) estará simplesmente caminhando pelos mais variados cenários, sejam eles comuns ou surreais, ao som de uma música relaxante de fundo, enquanto o Dr. Glenn Pierce (doutor que te acompanha durante os sonhos por meio de áudio) conversa sobre a vida, frases motivacionais, etc.

O jogo tem uma arte muito bela, algumas vezes simples e outras vezes mais surreais, devido à natureza mais complexa do jogo. Tem vezes que os cenários ficam realmente muito bonitos.

Agora, o que realmente chama a atenção nesse jogo são os sistemas de resolução de puzzle. Você literalmente faz de tudo o que não é convencional: altera o tamanho de objetos para auxiliar na travessia por salas, manipula portas para gerar novas entradas, atravessa labirintos psicodélicos, resolve puzzles baseados em perspectiva, onde o referencial que você atribui pra si modifica o ambiente, etc. Achei isso tudo muito legal, criativo e bonito até, apesar de alguns tipos de puzzles serem repetitivos (e olha que o jogo é curto).

Achei Superliminal muito legal. Ele não é o único e nem foi o primeiro jogo que segue esse estilo surreal, psicodélico, cheio de ilusões de ótica e mudanças de perspectiva, mas ainda assim a maneira como ele propõe puzzles que fogem do convencional e que surpreendem o jogador por serem completamente imprevisíveis me agradou bastante, ainda que seja um pouco repetitivo.

Se a história fosse mais profunda, eu poderia ter gostado ainda mais. Levando em conta o potencial que o enredo desse jogo tem, acho que daria pra ter feito algo a mais. Mas ainda assim, valeu a pena.

This kind of game is like PapaJaeger catnip. I just gobble this stuff up. What starts off as a quirky, seemingly innocent puzzle solver ends up having an emotional ending that really challenges your... perspective. Puns aside, this is exactly the kind of game I like when looking for something short and sweet.

There was a lot to love with this game. The puzzles were weird and unique and were handled exceptionally well by a well designed engine. I'm not even sure how it's possible to code something like this. The levels were really well designed and felt unique from one another. The game also has a fantastic sense of humor; I laughed out loud on several occasions.

It felt thematically influenced by Portal (and even mechanically at parts) with it's inventive puzzles and kooky sense of humor. Portal will always remain king of this particular sub-genre, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm glad there are still devs out there making games like this.

76/100

Hello, my name is Dr. Glenn Pierce.

Superliminal is a game that's very dear to me, possibly my favorite puzzle game ever. I love almost everything about it, so much that I've gone out of my way to see just about everything the game has to offer. I found it a very worthwhile experience. I would easily recommend it to anybody.

The game is a feast for the eyes and ears. Almost every level in the game (I'm looking at you, Blackout.) has this unique style that uses these soft, pastel colors that easily contrasts with the dull, dimly lit back hallways of the dreams you explore and pairs with the wonderful piano music to create a calming vibe that lets you concentrate on solving puzzles. It's also funny as hell. Despite only having one actual person completely off screen and one computer voice, Superliminal has a lot of jokes that, along with some of the absolute mindfucks that the puzzles give you, will at the very least get a little smirk or nose exhale out of anybody. Let me tell you, that guy really is named Dr. Glenn Pierce.

The puzzles are amazing too. The gist of the game is that objects are resized to how large they appear to be based on how close they are when you pick them up. Basically, imagine if you didn't have depth perception and you picked something up, turned around, set it down, and suddenly it reached the ceiling or was as small as a fly. Not only will they require you to challenge how you approach puzzle solving as a whole, but there's plenty of little changes to the world around you and tons of visual gags that make great use of the central mechanic. On top of all that, there are tons of little secrets and collectibles that can easily warrant multiple trips through this therapeutic wonderland.

Despite being only an hour long, the game is packed full of meaning. Through the main mechanic that leaves you forgetting there were limits to your thinking, the reoccurring motif of chess, a game that requires you to consider every possible move and rewards unconventional ways of thinking, the many mindfucks the game will throw at you, the contrast between the warm and fuzzy puzzle rooms and the dim service hallways with nothing to pick up or do and the dichotomy between the hopeful Dr. Glenn Pierce and pessimistic, strict robotic voice, the game effortlessly and flawlessly delivers the main message it likes to scrawl all across the levels.

Perception is reality.

really cool puzzles and atmosphere but i wasn't into the story at all. the ending felt very cheap, which is a very unpopular opinion i know. not going to be a long review since i feel so dizzy and nauseous right now lol

ah but i'd like to add while usually my least favorite parts in games are the scary parts since it's really hard for me to play through them, i really loved it in this game and thought it was genius how they designed that level in such a way that our brains did the rest of the job. i loved the `die die die - diet soda`

this came out in late 2019 and it really feels like a summation of an entire decade of gimmicky indie “one clever mechanic” (which i also call "1cm") puzzle design of the 2010’s to me. i almost imagine this game as being a statement about that type of game in general, in some form. but perhaps that’s me imposing my own reading onto it. more recently in this genre we got Viewfinder. Superliminal is snappier and more innovative than Viewfinder. it’s more The Stanley Parable/30 Flights of Loving than a game with discrete puzzles like Viewfinder - there are bunch of different simple scenario designs that are run through at a rapid pace, and the boundaries between them are basically nonexistent. the puzzle design gimmicks go further than something like Stanley Parable also - there’s a real focus on constant mind bending moments. and that’s legitimately cool! …at least for awhile.

because it’s a constantly shifting reality, there is seemingly never any interest in making the place you’re in feel real and tangible. once you’re used to these kinds of design tropes being used over and over, they fail to really move you anymore. and the writing never really approaches being coherent or contextualizing anything you’re doing in an interesting way - because the game seemingly has no interest in that. it’s a tech demo designed to be “mind bending” and push buttons, and it does succeed at that - but it’s underwhelming if you were expecting any more from that. even like Portal or The Stanley Parable, which are pretty one-note in many ways, at least have concepts in the fiction that are more immediately graspable and relatable. a lot more tools in the toolbox were used to make Superliminal than those games - and they’re cool tools! it’s the kind of stuff the Doom wad “ALT” or some other weirder Doom levels (like “Myhouse” for that matter) do that i like, but in a hyper-concentrated form. there’s a lot to be gained from that. but it’s not really clear for what purpose they’re being used. it feels directionless. at the end of the day you're wandering a bunch of nondescript rooms and hallways that are kind of hard to pretend are anything but something there to set up the puzzles.

here’s something about this particular approach to game design - like you’re Jules Verne unraveling the mysteries of the deep, or Werner Herzog filming in the jungle. approaching game design like it’s a kind of science, something inherent to the nature of being that you’re unraveling through your curiosity. it’s something that i find both admirable and completely delusional and un-self-aware. it’s a kind of macho attitude, but for a certain type of insulated programmer nerd. games like this offered a promise of a glimpse into something deeper, but rarely surpassed going beyond “huh, that was cool i suppose” because it was coming from people who worship the idea of technological exceptionalism and were thus uninterested in contextualizing it in larger art history. the insights to be gleaned were all very polished gimmicks rubbing up against each other in a consumer-friendly package intent on planting the seed of Deep Game Design in the minds of players - because that, in itself, was somehow powerful. Videogames Matter, folks. Videogames Can Do Things! videogames are technology, and all problems with technology can be eventually brained to death.

perhaps this approach works in some ways - Braid got me back into following games, after all. but if it does it’s less so because of the end result, but merely because they’re at least attempting to be something different than a majority of games… and that at least makes them stand out from other things.

but yeah - in that way i think Superliminal really embodies a lot of design trends of that era, many of which were on their way out by the time it came out. like i said it’s more expressive and innovative than Viewfinder - but i’ll also give that game credit, i feel like that one least it was trying to say something larger with the story that this doesn’t. even if it was clumsy. i’m not sure what Superliminal has to say about anything beyond “look at what we can do”. and that’s a real bummer, because in isolation - completely removed from the context (or lack thereof) of the game, i liked a lot of things about Superliminal.

but speaking of “My House” - i feel like that takes very similar ideas and actually does the whole thing much better, because there’s a really strong sense of angst and pathos there that never is remotely in this game. that’s perhaps the direction i can imagine more of these games taking in the future - the sort of hauntology angle vs. the “i’m a great scientist unraveling the secrets of the universe” one.

So I played through this delightful game with a friend and neither of us found a single collectible until the final level. I didn't know there even were any! Neither did she! I have extreme disdain for video games with voice-over work playing over and separated from gameplay, but there was something surreal about an Irish man chiding me to "think outside the box" when I only realized too late how little I had been giving Superliminal credit.

I watched a guide to see what all I had missed, and some of the gymnastics Superliminal expects you to pull to find its objectively useless trinkets are downright devilish. To find everything requires paying incredible attention, but in a fair way, as the game only provides as many objects to interact with as are absolutely necessary to exploit the subtlest of environmental tells.

I'm torn on how this affects my feelings of the game. I enjoyed my time with the base puzzles that were required for completion. I giggled when clicking the "Mini Soda" button on a vending machine gave me a phone-sized vending machine. I was completely satisfied and ready to move on after its run time.

However, there was also far more depth than I expected. The restraint to not tutorialize even one of the three different types of collections I could have been on the look-out for surprised me. Watching video of those secret puzzles, born out of a spirit to encourage breaking the game to its theoretical conclusions, made me feel like a basic bitch for often literally walking right by them.

I am torn because I feel like I was robbed of my curiosity. What the game told me to do was so straightforward. What the game had the possibility of allowing me to do was often complex and indirect.

On the one hand, I respect this game's approach to collectibles more than most. Each and every one required me to interact with the game's central mechanics in new and clever ways. If anything, Superliminal made me respect that some truly fun and clever people worked on this project. However, their ingenuity doesn't feel like it was properly managed to curate an experience conducive to what they imagined. With all the myriad game experiences out there I will never get to play, it feels irresponsible for Superliminal to expect me to love it so much to want to tear it to shreds. Maybe I've been burnt on bad experiences in the genre.

2.5 stars at C+ / B- rank. I'm frustrated because I can imagine alternate timelines where some slight mishap caused me to rethink "oh, is this kind of thing possible?", and maybe I had a blast playing it a very different kind of way. But that's all hypothetical. Still an easy game to recommend for a casual afternoon, but unless you're a specific kind of person, watching a 100% walkthrough will probably be as good a use of your time than trying to do so yourself.