This week, I stepped out of my comfort zone and played a new type of game, a walking simulator. For my Critical Play, I played Superliminal by Pillow Castle Games, a game for people who like puzzles, non-violent games, or games about exploring the psyche. I played it on a docked Nintendo Switch, however, it can also be played on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. This game is a first-person puzzle game centered around optical illusions. Something that immediately stood out to me was how it turns camera movement and walking into a powerful narrative tool. It blurs the line between walking simulator and puzzle platformer. It differs from typical puzzle games where the puzzles are disjoint levels that exist on their own. In Superliminal, walking is used as a means of connecting the “levels” together to help build out the narrative. In order to get from room to room (or level to level) you must travel through the liminal space of the rooms. The game opens with the haunting onscreen quote “You are now dreaming” which is reinforced by the long-form puzzles representing an endless stream of dreams. The mechanic and centering of walking is used as a metaphor.
Another metaphorical mechanic that is reinforced is how objects grow and shrink based on the player’s perspective, showing how similar to when dreaming, things aren’t always what they seem. For example, when an item is picked up and close to your eyes before dropping it, it will be massive when it hits the ground, and the opposite holds true as well. Walking directly tells the story as from each step you take, your surroundings change, shift, and grow opening/creating doors or providing a landing to jump to the next room.
These core mechanics of perspective, walking, and exploration create dynamics that lead to disorientation and experimentation. While playing, I often found myself confused and unsure of how to pass to the next area. I would pick up random items, resize them, and experiment with navigating the labyrinth of levels. However, this confusion led to moments of extreme satisfaction, upon completion of each room. I believe that this is one of the aesthetics that the game designers were aiming for: a sense of discovery and sensation. Rather than a typical adrenaline rush from other games, I was met with curiosity and deep-thought.
In terms of types of fun, I believe that the game leans heavily on four of them: discovery, challenge, narrative, and sensation. Discovery comes from each room changing and challenging the player’s preconceived notions about what’s in the room. One example of this was when the only way to get out was to break the wall rather than leaving through the door in one room. (See photo below). Challenge is explored through the actual solving of the puzzles. These solutions require the player to think outside of the box in order to advance. Sensation is experienced through the vivid, constantly changing environments. The dreamscapes are quite interesting, especially when rooms are similar with minor changes across them. Narrative is explored through direct experience and action from the player. Additionally, by interacting with the seemingly random scattered radios, the player uncovers more clues about their surroundings and current situation.
(This is the room after breaking the wall. The door on the right was a red herring as in past rooms, escape was via doors like this one.)
Overall, Superliminal, offers an unique exploration of walking as a core storytelling mechanic. By abstracting away things like a HUD, complex movement mechanics, and other common gaming mechanics, the player is forced to focus on what is ahead of them and creatively think up solutions.
Ethics:
While many games use violence as an important mechanic to traverse through the game, Superliminal is completely devoid of any notion of it. There are no enemies, weapons, failures, or even death. This choice doesn’t inherently make the game less intense, as it focuses on a more psychological, haunting tone. The conflict is fully internal as the game appears to be happening within one’s mind.
Thematically, it is similar to the tabletop roleplaying game that we played in section, however the mechanics for survival or progress are different. While Subliminal used walking and perspective to make progress, in the RPG, violence is necessary to beat the bad guys and thus progress. Thus, the inclusion of violence does not inherently change stories, but rather the dynamics and aesthetics of these stories. Subliminal likely could’ve been told in a similar vein where in each room you have to fight sleep paralysis demons or something similar in order to make it to the next, however, this was simply not the direction the designers wanted to go in.
