Limbo

Limbo is a sidescrolling platform/puzzler game that came out to not much fanfare last month, but I saw a rave review in a recent Game Informer. I figured it would be cheap and short, and I'm a fan of puzzle games that take themselves too seriously so I decided to give this one a shot. And I'm glad I did. The easy comparison to make is to 2008's Braid. The game contains dozens of mind-bending puzzles of varying difficulty, and every single one of them felt perfectly integrated with the game's atmosphere. While Braid relied mostly on controlling the flow of time to solve puzzles, Limbo is basically just one long course in which you can mess around with physics to get from point A to point B. At times you were reversing gravity in the midst of a free-fall, or pulling the legs off of a mutant spider, or maybe getting some guns to blow each-other up. The atmosphere in the game was noteworthy as well- the entire thing was black-and white, with few things to distract from the puzzle at hand. The boy you control was nothing but a shadow with two white eyes for expression. I can hardly remember any music at all; most of the time it was some ambient sounds to go along with the mysterious feel of the whole thing. Finally, there was basically no plot whatsoever. The game starts with the boy, laying down in the woods at night, opening his eyes and jumping right into a puzzle. A quick scene towards the end of the game hints at the boy's intentions, and the final scene expands upon this slightly, but I don't think there's any deep philosophical meaning behind it. Essentially what it adds up to is a game with a haunting atmosphere but the fun gameplay to back it all up. Definitely worth a download.