SUPERLIMINAL
From a certain point of view…
We’ve seen more than our share of strange test facilities in our time (mostly in games), but nothing that looks quite like Superliminal. And we really do mean looks. This puzzler is all about playing with perspective in a way that’s possible only in an interactive medium like videogames.
Going hands-on we begin to explore the corridors of the facility, but our way is blocked by a massive yellow chess piece that reaches from floor to ceiling. But, just like the smaller ones that we saw littered around on the way here, if we view it from a distance, where it appears small, we’re able to pluck it into our hands. Simply viewing it from further away has ‘shrunk’ it, and we can drop the now-small thing to the floor. We have to do the opposite later on, getting close to a child’s toy block in order to turn it into a platform tall enough to help us reach a door, or grab a fire escape sign from a loop of corridors and place it as a ramp so we can jump over walls too tall to climb unaided. You have to quite literally think outside the box.
Later puzzles tease how the reality-bending game will evolve over time. We spawn objects we need out of thin air by aligning patterns in our line of sight; certain objects, like an alarm clock, can teleport us into a new reality, like a bedroom; and pathways that appear to be exits may turn out to be fake if we view them from the right angle. However you look at it, from where we’re standing Superliminal looks like it’ll be something truly special. Above We wish we could get giant tins of pop from a vending machine.
“THIS PUZZLER IS
ALL ABOUT PLAYING WITH PERSPECTIVE IN A WAY THAT’S POSSIBLE ONLY IN AN INTERACTIVE MEDIUM.”