It's not terrible, but its slightly immersion-breaking and at times hideously unsightly. I loved the simplicity of the visuals, they are just enough to give you the right look and feel of the environments, but the lighting effects or lack thereof are highlighted in sections where really crudely cast shadows that appear jagged as all heck across walls and floors, and absolutely no shadows appear under objects other than some generic all-encompassing light source. You start in a hotel room with an alarm sounding, you leave only to find that each corridor is linked to the next puzzle, and the completed series of puzzle then leads to an elevator rinse and repeat. Everything is clean, crisp and clinical until you "break out of bounds" and discover the subtext of the game a grittier underbelly with smeared blood and warped ideology. Graphically Superliminal takes a lot of cues from Portal. Effectively you use the analogue sticks to look and move around, and there is a jump and interact button that's about it! Guided by a combination of the GLaDOS-like berating female A.I, and soothing vocal tones of Dr Glenn Pierce you either have a small sense of direction with virtually no sense of urgency, which makes for a pretty chilled gaming experience or you try to comply to the A.I's belittling critique of your problem solving and dreaming methods, and still somehow feel no sense of urgency. For example, you can pick up a small 2-3 inch scale wedge of cheese, hold it aloft your head, drop it and it scales up to ten times the size, repeat as required and tilt it into a diagonal formation and bingo: you have a room scaled ramp! Another example is a huge immovable object in front of you such as an impressive marble sculpture, but move far enough away and line it up with the horizon and it appears titchy, so grab it while it's tiny and move it around with ease!Ĭontrolling Superliminal is exceptionally simple, which gives it better playability. Superliminal utilises the Unity engine to make these illusions reality, and thanks to some cunningly simple ideas: there is a lot of fun to be had. Forced perspective can be boiled down to the same effect as tourists aligning themselves with the Eiffel Tower to appear as though they are as tall as it in a photograph, or when you make a pinching motion with your index finger and thumb and frame the setting sun or moon with them to snap an image of you appearing to hold them in your fingertips. Set across nine stages, Superliminal utilises several methods of camera trickery to fool the audience into believing an object is closer or further from you than it actually is. I was hooked on the simplistic premise long before I got to play anything at all. ![]() I initially observed Museum of Simulation Technology as a tech demo several years ago, and I intently watched it flower into Superliminal on PC in 2019, and actually tweeted the Devs about Switch Port progress around 6 months before it was released. I no longer had to face off against armies of grunts, I now had to combat the theatre of war in my mind. Portal turned everything I knew on its head, and instead of spraying bullets I was firing off thoughts and attempting to outwit the outlandish puzzles as quickly and succinctly as possible. ![]() Sure there were a few levers to pull and secret paths to discover, but nothing was truly taxing or intellectually deeper than the mere flip of a semi-hidden switch. ![]() Until then I had been playing Half-life, Counter-Strike and other FPS titles with the sole aim of survival and blasting everything in sight. When Portal arrived in 2007 my mind was blown wide open. Superliminal challenges everything you think you know and funnels you through a series of interesting puzzles via the perspective of the first person. Glenn Pierce in on hand with his extensive dream therapy techniques and positive reinforcement to steer you through to the end game: blissful awakedness. A stress-inducing repetition of illusion and dilemma that requires you to think outside the box to break the cycle and preserve your sanity. Imagine being trapped in a dream, a strange warped dream that seems real, but isn't quite fully grounded in reality.
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