Press A to Podcast (I don’t know, there’s no text in this game!)
Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about Limbo, which is the first game from Danish developer Playdead, and their breakout hit as well. Something about the game’s simplicity, both in controls and art style really struck a chord with people when it released and it became surprisingly successful in the indie space back in 2010. A lot of the cinematic platformer type gameplay seen here would get refined in their next game, Inside, which we talked about like a million years ago, but there is still something distinctly eerie about Limbo. The game is very quiet and pretty dark, with each failure by the player punctuated by a more grisly animation than you would imagine, and the overall difficulty means you’ll be seeing these deaths fairly often. Whether the trial and error gameplay sits well with you is a matter of personal taste, but you can’t deny the tone it sets or the atmosphere it puts you in. We’re going to be talking about difficulty and how the game ramps up in complexity as it goes on, the intricacies in the detail Playdead packed into the world, and how I am a big hypocrite (or am I?).
Thank you for joining us again this week! We felt like this game was an appropriate lead in to the spookiest month of the year, given its dour tone and creepy visual style. What did you think of Inside? Did you play this years ago, or maybe visited it for the first time for this podcast? How did the difficulty of the game strike you, and did you feel it became appropriately complex near the end of the game? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re entering Halloween proper, and for our first Pocket episode, we’ll be talking about Buddy Simulator 1984, so please check us out then… or else! Scary enough for you?!