Critical Play: Puzzles – Nick Hafer – The Mechanics of Magic

Superliminal is a first-person, single player (though now with multiplayer added) puzzle game created by Pillow Castle Games on Windows, macOS, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox. Its playable audience is anyone over the age of 12-14 as it requires some problem solving skills and interest in the Somnasculpt world. My guess is the target audience is young/middle aged adults who are casual gamers (similar to Portal games). This game gives Portal meets Stanley Parable.

“How do the mechanics of the puzzle(s) influence the experience of the game?”

The main mechanic in Superliminal is the ability to resize objects based on your perspective of the object in relation to the background behind the object. The creators of the game developed a narrative around this mechanic that explains it in a few different ways, but mainly that you are in some kind of dream therapy/perception altering experiment called Somnasculpt. Using this primary resizing mechanic, you try to navigate through a series of themed levels based on supposed different levels of perception/parts of the brain. I argue that this resizing mechanic is critical to the progression of the story and a novel mechanic for all players.

You develop different uses for the mechanic: resizing, rotating, fitting into visual puzzles, speed, resizing yourself, and more. The game develops your intuition of this mechanic at just the right rate, where you feel as if you’re figuring things out on your own: in a state of flow the entire time.

As I said earlier, this game gives Portal meets Stanley Parable.

The game plays a lot like Portal. There’s an overarching narrative, some kind of goal. There’s a series of puzzles throughout the game, each puzzle usually fits into a larger level that contains similarly themed puzzles. Each level uses/teaches you different mechanics. The main difference between these two games (besides the main mechanic of portals vs perspective resizing) in my opinion is that Portal felt harder than Superliminal… I think because there’s a lot more use of physics, like needing to launch yourself across things, which took me longer to figure out. There’s also more integrated coop in Portal.
The game’s setting reminds me of Stanley Parable (even though I’ve never played, I’ve seen clips). Both games are set in similar settings and the game assets kind of remind me of each other. My knowledge of Stanley Parables narrative is quite limited, but iirc it deals a lot with choice/fate, which is a key difference from Superliminal. Though the games look the same if you were to screenshot them, and might feel the same when you’re walking around, the interaction/storylines are quite different. Another similarity between the two games is the sassy narrator.

Love:

The loading screens! They’re fun, creative, keep you guessing, and almost make you look forward to waiting because chances are you get to see a different loading screen.
The built in speed run setting. This is super fun, especially because the game is quite short. It turns the game from a discovery puzzle game into a competitive speed game/rogue like. There are also game achievements attached to different times. I’ve speedrun this game in under 30 minutes which was quite a fun challenge!
Easter eggs. There are little easter egg mini games here and there. There are shapes that you have to get the right perspective of, like in the star room. These are fun and give the player a feeling of extra credit, like they know more than the average player.
The ability to be free with the mechanics. A key example of this is when you are resizing the world using the doors. You can make yourself huge or tiny. Neither adds to the storyline but its just fun to have free time in the game to mess around sometimes!

Improvements:

There were some parts of Superliminal that felt like filler: like walking through a lot of the hallways where you just have to move lots of small objects out of the way felt like filler. To improve the game, I’d add more puzzles that build on the game’s core mechanic, rather than just reusing what we already know.
I wish the game were longer… this is kind of building off the last comment though since I just want more creative challenging puzzles so solve.

Aesthetics: This game covers fantasy, narrative, challenge, discovery, expression?, and submission.

Fantasy: The game is set in a make believe world where you are trying to
Narrative: You are forced into the SomnaSculpt dream therapy story line and must try to escape.
Challenge: There are lots of challenging puzzles that you must use mechanics to solve.
Discovery: As you move through each level, you find different uses for the main mechanic, as well as actual differences in setting too.
Expression: There are usually a few different ways to solve each puzzle using the game mechanics, so figure out which best suits you!
Submission: This game feels like a pastime when you’re trying to speedrun it because you must play it over and over and OVER again.

Dynamics:

The resizing mechanic offers many different dynamics for the players, especially through all the different themed levels. At one point, the player feels scared or spooked because it looks like there’s blood on the walls (its really just red paint).
The dynamic of the game definitely shifts after the player completes the game, if they want to try to speedrun it. They know they’ve completed all the levels, and now the game shifts from discovery and trying new things, to refinement, efficiency, and competitiveness. You must make every movement, resize, and rotation count.

Mechanics:

The main mechanic as described earlier, is the ability to resize objects based on your perspective. There’s also door guards the prevent you from bringing objects between levels. Lastly there are doors to walk through which allow you to resize yourself!

Screenshot: you must resize things to place them on buttons in the first few levels of the game. This particular solution is creative, taking an exit sign and making it bigger to cover both buttons.