![]() ![]() If we pick it up from the table and hold it in our palm we will perceive it at its regular size, if we move it in front of our eye it will seem huge, but if we move it to the furthest corner of the room it will seem very small. The closer it is to use the larger it seems, while the further it is the smaller it appears. ![]() Let’s take for example a chess piece, the knight. But what is perspective? Well, the simplest explanation is related to the way different objects are conveyed to create the illusion of 3D and spatiality. The latter is the key feature of the game, Superliminal challenging you to remodel the surrounding reality by changing the angle from which you observe it. While it may sound simple and banal, the level design ensures the constant sweating of our neurons, in a perpetual chase of solutions and of finding the correct perspective. As one of the candidates, our main mission is to dream and through it manipulate our surroundings until we get to the end. In the case of Superliminal, the story takes us to an institute that studies dream therapy. The scope is to solve your way to the ending, by manipulating different objects, while taking advantage of the creative use of perspectives and the laws of physics. ![]() The basic elements remain the same in all the representatives of this new wave of puzzle games: first-person view, a more or less elaborate story that constitutes the motivation to go and solve tons of puzzles, and a setting that makes the whole package believable. If you have lived under a rock and somehow managed to avoid any contact with the new generation of puzzle games, this title is the best way to catch up with what you have missed. In other words, if you liked Portal of The Stanley Parable you will love Superliminal. “It” is Superliminal, a new take on puzzle games, a title that combines the best features of the games that came before, proving to be a must-have for all the fans of the genre. It fit perfectly with the game’s structure and developer Pillow Castle should be applauded for not muddying it.Is it a plane? Is it a twister? Is it big? Is it small? Is it Portal? Is it The Stanley Parable? Yes it is and well no, it is not – it all depends where are you looking from. Superliminal surprised me, not only by how simple its message was, but also by how much it resonated. One of my biggest bugbears with puzzle games - and The Soujourn is a good example - is that they try to over-engineer a story to contain its challenges. The final ten minutes or so ramp up the pace (and in some cases the nausea) but not the danger, a move which makes sense when the ending is explained. The collaboration feels uneasy in a game with no time limit or real understanding of your reason for being there, but even without the narration the game would have been fun to play. The computerised voice of the AI is the opposite, commenting when you take the “wrong” direction and attempting to heighten emotion at various points. Your character is in some sort of Inception-like dream state at a clinic run by a calm Scottish doctor who communicates with you via radios you discover. The lack of conflict is soothing in a way. Doors can be removed and discarded, wedges of cheese grown to impossible sizes, and neon exit signs vastly expanded to illuminate darkened rooms or activate multiple floor panels at once. ![]() Once you get your head around that - and doing so is a challenge in itself as the game gives you almost zero instruction - you’ll be tasked with moving forward through each new room by manipulating the objects within to form ramps, bridges, stairs and more. Everything’s size is relative to how you see it, not how large it actually is. Hold it in relation to the floor you're standing on and let go at your feet… and it becomes tiny. Pick up a can of soda and bring it close enough to you so that it fills the room and release it, and it will indeed fill the room. As the game repeatedly tells you, perspective is reality. Without going all Father Ted on you, Superliminal plays around with size and distance in a way I’ve not seen in a game before. But it carves out a unique niche thanks to its main mechanic: perspective. Superliminal shares some of the tropes of the first-person puzzlers that came before it such as The Spectrum Retreat and Portal, but also the meta narration and often dream-like surrealism that The Stanley Parable nailed. ![]()
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