Video Game· 2010· Platformer

Limbo

by Arnt Jensen, Jeppe Carlsen

Limbo: it draws on 1 recorded source.

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What influenced Limbo

The works this one is recorded as drawing on.

Another World

Video Game · 1991

InfluenceMEDIUM

Another World established the cinematic platformer: a silent protagonist, no interface of any kind, rotoscoped animation, and death as the ordinary way of learning what a room contains. Limbo is built on all four. It has no heads-up display, no dialogue and no explanation, a boy moving left to right through a hostile landscape, and a design that expects repeated death as the means of understanding each trap. Both games also refuse to state their premise: the player is dropped in with no account of where this is or why, and the silhouetted art keeps it that way.

About the work

Limbo

Set in the Playdead universe.

Limbo is a 2D side-scroller, incorporating a physics system that governs environmental objects and the player character. The player guides an unnamed boy through dangerous environments and traps as he searches for his sister. The developer built the game's puzzles expecting the player to fail before finding the correct solution. Playdead called the style of play "trial and death" and used gruesome imagery for the boy's deaths to steer the player from unworkable solutions.