Limbo Review

Welcome to the gray thing that is Limbo!

From my experience indie games have always had a lot of entertainment value for a small cost. Putting hundreds of hours into games that don’t even cost 10 bucks is pretty much the best way to spend your money on games these days. Limbo, however, was the exception to the rule, for me anyways.

The game starts and all you see is gray, and that’s pretty much all you will ever see throughout the game. You are a shadow looking boy with glowing white eyes in a land filled with gray and white trying to make your way to… the right.

The controls of the game are as simple as they get. You can move left and right, climb up and, jump and drag things. Using these skills, you have to solve a series of puzzles to advance in your quest… to go right. Nothing of the gameplay is explained so you pretty much have to learn the controls and mechanics of the game on your own. This is fine, as the game is really simple to play.

Running to the right, I find myself solving the little puzzles the game throws at me with ease. After the game has been going on for about an hour, I start to think if the puzzles will ever get challenging. I’m yet to face anything in the game that gives greater trouble than timing a jump right.

Jumping! It's pretty much all you do in this game.

Eventually, I find myself getting annoyed with the game, waiting for it to end. More tedious timing based jump puzzles, more anger as I end up repeating them over and over again because I’m not interested enough in the game to pay enough attention to get the jumps down right the first few tries. The most challenging thing in the game is not knowing how each of the puzzles work until you die on it for the first time.

Finally, after a little over two hours, I beat the game. It felt like nothing. The ending gave me no sensation of accomplishment. I was only glad I got through it so I could say I’ve beaten the damn game. Nothing was explained. Who the hell was the boy I was playing as? Where did he go when I beat the game? Did he get out of Limbo? Why was he there in the first place?

I had heard mixed review of the game prior to playing it. Some said it was a fun little game, others the opposite. Unfortunately, I have to lean towards the latter view. To me the game was a tedious pile of trial and error. I get that the atmosphere was supposed to be what it was, being in Limbo and all, but it was just so boring to look at the gray and listening to the sound of the boy’s footsteps. The lack of music did not help increase my interest towards the game either.

As much as I love indie games and appreciate the people who make them, Limbo was not worth buying in my opinion. Ten euros for a game of two hours of gameplay with really no replay value whatsoever makes Limbo the most disappointing indie game I have played to date. Ten bucks really isn’t that much money for a game, but for Limbo it is. To me, Limbo seems like the kind of game you find on Newgrounds and play through when you have nothing else to do.

Limbo - 5 bucks for each hour.