Saturday, October 18, 2025

The 18th Day of Horror: Limbo (PC Steam Edition)



Fair disclosure! I played and completed Limbo on the Asus Rog Ally X, which was an excellent experience. Limbo came out in 2011 apparently, although I thought it was a more recent title. If you are a fan of side-scrolling puzzler/adventure titles then there's a good chance you have already played this fine little game. If you are like me and have not, then I definitely recommend it. 

Limbo is, honestly, a creepy little title that conveys horror through an unexplained, nightmarish world your small child-like character must travel through. His reason for being here is uncertain, his goal is uncertain (escape?) and the reason everything wants to murder him is also unclear, other than the world (Limbo, presumably) is an incredibly hostile place, literally dog-eat-dog. 

Since the story is vague, the horror of the world is conveyed entirely through the experience of moving through it and being killed...sometimes a lot....and then finding yourself waking up a bit before whatever killed you giving you chance to circumvent or thwart whatever it is. The game, like many side-scrolling 2D platformers of its nature, relies on the player to intuit clues as to resolving puzzles through environmental queues. It's not bad about this, actually, though I did consult a walkthrough on about four occasions when I was otherwise stumped. Sometimes the action you need to take is even less obvious. As an example, early on you run into a gigantic spider which waits patiently to murder you. Earlier you spot a bear trap in a tree. While it was clear to me that that trap had something to do with solving the spider issue, it was less clear how to get it down from the branch where it was hanging. The solution was novel (and makes sense) but not intuitive at first as the game had not telegraphed that the solution was even really a mechanical option in the game.

Later on the game gets more platformer-like and the puzzles deal with more physics, especially when you find yourself in the depths of a grim cityscape/industrial factory that, being in Limbo and all, is utterly nightmarish and designed to kill you. I have often hit walls on games like this in the past where the dexterity necessary to pass through such tests is more than I can muster, but Limbo proved to be just fine; a few such areas required some repetition and repeated dying but eventually I figured it out.

Overall a fun experience. I took about four hours to complete the game, which meant it was a satisfying evening experience and that in itself was a pleasant surprise. I have many games in my Steam backlog that are 60 to 100 hours to complete (or more....looking at you Assassin's Creed franchise!) but I would take 15-20 shorter games like Limbo over a monstrous AAA game any day of the week. Solid little game, I will give it an A!

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