The narrative crafted to justify this strange scenario also ends up being far more fulfilling than I thought it would be initially. It reminded me of the first Portal in how it had some rough edges, especially when compared to Portal 2, but the mechanics were sound. Superliminal, even with its handful of clunky moments, was still a ton of fun. Weird stuff in a hallway Maintaining a Positive Point of View It seemed especially out of place, as that gameplay design didn’t happen before or after that section. For instance, one especially dark area required you to stumble onto a secret path to move forward in the darkness. Sometimes, these were still intuitive enough for me to figure out, but others I’d just be spinning around without a clue. You would just have to find some path that wasn’t readily apparent. There were even parts of the game where you either weren’t manipulating any object or doing so in a way that had never been introduced before. These quickly became frustrating, as I’d just be pacing around a room hoping to see the cursor change. Instead, your task was finding the one tiny object you were able to manipulate. Superliminal had a few of these moments where the solution to a puzzle was no longer about getting the right perspective. It’s why I’ve never been a fan of point and click games. One of the least appealing things to me in any video game is when I’m scouring an area looking for some kind of item or solution. ![]() Chess is a recurring theme The Scavenger Hunt Toward the end of the game, even a few areas seemed to lose grip on the premise. The intuitiveness of Superliminal doesn’t make it easy though, there were some puzzles that had me scratching my head at times. ![]() The first time I picked up a normal-sized exit sign and moved it around in the air to let go and have it become 30 feet long, the intuitive nature of the action was endlessly amusing. I found this immensely enjoyable from the start. Nearly every puzzle you solve in the game to move forward is based on your viewing and sometimes moving objects from a specific viewpoint. Some objects may only be accessible if you view them from a certain perspective – sort of like the Riddler clues in the Arkham games. In some parts, you may have to manipulate the size of the doorways to fit through them, but in other scenarios, you’ll need to change your shape within the entire environment to fit through a static doorway. It sort of sounds like a one-trick pony, but the execution in-game along with a variety of other perspective-based puzzles keeps things fresh throughout. If you’re close to a small object that you’re handling, it will appear much larger. If you handle a large object far away, you see it as small and thus it is tangibly small. That means that objects you interact with will change size relative to how they look from your first-person view. The whole allure of Superliminal is that you’re going to be manipulating objects by changing your perspective of them. There’s something familiar about this place… Puzzles by Perspective It had the same dismissive quality of GlaDOS, though with a bit less personality to flesh out. It mostly gives you vague direction and reassurance that, even though things are not going well, you can probably make it through it. This voice, as you proceed, isn’t guiding you or anything. Yet what reminded me most of that classic puzzle game, aside from the puzzles, is the omnipresent monotone AI-like voice. The original Portal had plenty of strange “testing facility” areas and quite a few off-the-grid zones as well. This is where the Portal comparison comes in. ![]() However, I think if you’re looking past just the raw aesthetic, the games are dramatically different. Moving through office complexes and quickly transitioning to strange hotel lobbies or back rooms/alleys also gives it that “ Stanley Parable” feel. While it doesn’t have the now iconic narration element, it does have quite a bit of comedic voice-over that happens throughout. ![]() The setting for Superliminal and the nature of crazy events that occur are evocative of The Stanley Parable.
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