This "game" if you even can call it that, is pretty boring.
There is a lot of care and detail put into the idea of how a person with psychosis sees the world, which I appreciate, but the execution of the game and it's story is so bad that it would have been better off as a movie.

Typical gameplay:
- press forward to walk for 5 minutes, hearing incessant voices and dialogue in your head over and over
- find a "puzzle" where you press a button to focus in on something, then look around to find another thing that looks like it
- do some combat I guess, which is serviceable, but very basic
- experience the "story" which is almost entirely exposition dumping and a narration that is so far up it's own ass trying to be interesting

Maybe you'll love the game based on the merit of it's pros, mainly the stunning visuals and mocap, and the respectful treatment of mental illness. However, this one really didn't do it for me. There are better games out there that tell better stories and do a better job telling them.

Note on my ratings:

Treat my stars like Michelin Stars - just having one means the game is worth playing in some way.

1/2 ⭐: hot trash garbage, since you can't do zero stars here
⭐: below average, needs work
⭐⭐: average
⭐⭐⭐: pretty good
⭐⭐⭐⭐: excellent
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: all time favourite

Arenas are awfully designed, enemies that don't need projectiles spam them when you're a foot away, the guns look cool, sound cool, and feel cool to shoot but they suck against anything that isn't piss weak. The enemies also do stupid damage regardless of their strength. The shoulder dash attack thing is garbage, using it is just an invitation to take damage. Game almost feels like it doesn't want you to run and gun tbh, which is odd, cuz I feel like that's part of the point of these games. Overall the game is ok, but it has so many little problems it feels unfun, and like a burden to play, but you might get enjoyment out of it. It just ended up being not fun for me by the end of the second episode as the boss hits me with moves I can barely avoid from places I cant see him as waves of other enemies spawn in a terrible little arena with literally two heals after fighting gauntlets to get there. Just wasn't it.

Superliminal is better the less you think about it. The central mechanic is novel and likely to charm you. The problem is, in Superliminal the central mechanic is all there is.

Superliminal is a puzzle game with only one puzzle. You walk into a room. There is a clear, visible exit very high up. You have to find some small object, use forced perspective to make it really big, and use it as a staircase to reach the exit. I do not exaggerate when I say, this explanation sums up probably 60% of all of the content in Superliminal. It is amazing that, even in the final stretches of the game, Superliminal is still presenting the player with these staircase puzzles. I question if Superliminal has enough depth to even be considered a puzzle game.

Comparing Superliminal to the likes of Antichamber and Manifold Garden makes these flaws stand out. Both are also games that pride themselves on non-Euclidean trickery. And yet, the spacial conundrums of Antichamber and Manifold Garden are propped up by actual puzzles. The other key difference is Antichamber and Manifold Garden better understood restraint. Not every game needs a story. Not every game needs a realistic art style. This is a lesson Superliminal sorely needs: a bad story is far, far worse than no story at all.

In short, its hard to say what the value of Superliminal is. The story is bad, the art is nothing to write home about. Other games have done the trippy geometry far better.

Superliminal does have a pretty novel central mechanic. In fact, that is all it has. Much like the illusions that form it's basis, Superliminal falls apart the second you take a closer look at it