Review for Superliminal. Game for Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 07/07/2020
There are games that arise from a story, which is just waiting to be told. There are games that come from a place, which just wants to be represented virtually. There are instead games that come from a single, good idea and that from that they want to become true and complete video games. Superliminal is clearly part of the last of these groups: a small independent title born from a very good idea, from a fairly innovative and intriguing concept; It is a pity that one - or even two - brilliant intuitions are not enough to create a full-bodied and quality video game, especially in the highly competitive 2020.
Debut title for Pillow Castle Games studio (based in Seattle) and in production since 2013, Superliminal is a first person puzzle game who in a couple of badly counted hours will show us the credits, after trying to help our unnamed digital alter ego escape the side effects of what started out as a harmless dream therapy and which will instead prove to be a fairly serious "trip", to get out of which it will be necessary to overcome a series of rooms and puzzles based on the environment that surrounds us and the dream dimension in which we will find ourselves.
A matter of perspective
So what's this brilliant idea behind Superliminal? It is easy to say: it is about a game that mocks what you normally think of perspective and visual perception. In its rooms we will find all kinds of puzzles that make use of a concept that is difficult to explain but very easy to understand as soon as you see it in action (we leave you a trailer below to help you). Let's try an example: imagine you are holding a dice in your hand, in front of your face. Moving it to different angles in front of your eyes (moving it closer, putting it further away, to the side or aligning the view to objects in the distance) it may seem more or less large, for a game of perspective. And right here comes the concept of Superliminal: the perspective does not exist and, if you place your dice next to a distant building, in this game the dice will take on the size it has in your eyes compared to the aforementioned building, growing exponentially .
We repeat: difficult to explain, but we hope that the video has helped you to understand. And from this rather odd concept, a very good part of the Superliminal riddles develops: you have to get on a very high platform and you only have a small triangular slice of cheese with you? Perfect, just align the slice with the platform in your view and release it, making it large enough to use it to climb comfortably, like a ramp. This is just an example of these puzzles that - also given the very low longevity - we do not want to reveal to you in advance, and with whom Superliminal will try to test your brain, not just through this object-scaling mechanic, but by continuing to fool around in other ways with your vision and depth perception.
All very interesting, too bad that the level of challenge, especially for such a fan as the writer, is really reduced to the bone and - paradoxically - it goes down as the minutes pass. If in the first rooms you feel stimulated by the challenge you have in front of you, as you progress through the levels the puzzles will start to look alike, until you get to a final sequence at the limit of the acceptable, where mechanically speaking it will be enough to walk "randomly" to proceed in the game.
"What happens?" (cit.)
So if the gameplay lives of ups and downs and we would certainly have liked to see it expanded with new concepts and variations on the theme (especially thinking that in one way or another the game has been in development for 7 years!), To make us turn up our noses further is the story that Superliminal wants to tell. If you really want to talk about history.
The narration is entrusted to a robotic voice that will comment on our test results (GLaDOS, is that you?) In a disillusioned and flat way, to the recordings of a certain Dr. Glenn Pierce (Cave Johnson, is that you?) And to that environmental storytelling that it is so fashionable nowadays. Unfortunately it all boils down to a few scribbled chalkboards and a couple of documents found lying around: in Superliminal, from start to finish, we will struggle to understand what is going on. Beyond an exaggerated draw from Portal in its inspiration (strong - appreciated - influences also from Inception), the development team seemed almost too taken up by his idea and by wanting to create an apparent grandeur in the events of the game , who preferred to flood us - especially in the aforementioned and delusional ending - with strange images and sounds that wanted to bring to mind the world of dreams, without however thinking about what an unsuspecting user would have understood of everything that was revealed before his eyes.
One can hardly follow a common thread, of course, but, also due to an impalpable suspense and tension that are not constructed correctly, they are the emotions that the developers clearly wanted to convey that fail to reach us. At this point we might as well focus less on trying to find a justification for the initial idea in terms of history and maybe give us a few more challenging hours of exploring and squeezing the brain.
Do you want some advice? Give games like QUBE 1 & 2, The Turing Test or of course His Majesty Portal 2 a try if you want to find the best that 3D first person puzzles can offer: Superliminal starts really well, but then loses once the initial surprise fades. and, also considering its limited duration, we can only recommend it to those who have already stripped the aforementioned alternatives or perhaps at the first sales of the digital store of your favorite platform.
► Superliminal is a Puzzle type game developed and published by Pillow Castle for Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 07/07/2020
