Superliminal’s genius perception mechanic is beautifully taught and expanded on throughout the game, leading to puzzles that make you go “Whaaaaaaaa” and leave you more confused after you solve them. Constantly having your mind blown room after room makes you feel like you’re in an actual dream while playing. The game’s perception puzzle mechanic constantly evolves in ever-creative ways to keep the puzzles fresh and gameplay exciting. If the game’s concept had been explained to me by a friend or online review, I would’ve assumed that it would be the worst puzzle game ever. How can you teach someone to use the perception of objects to solve a puzzle? What clues can you place in the room to give the player just enough information to solve the puzzle while not getting completely lost? However, I quickly realized that this was truly where the genius of the game lies.
Take the example of the cube and vase puzzle. The player walks into the room and immediately understands what is needed to solve the puzzle. A cube to make a big step up to a door. They look around the room, and the only thing they see is what looks like a weird checkerboard design in the corner. It’s on the wall, a table, a pillar. How does the player solve this puzzle? How can they possibly turn a 2D cube into something can interact with? However, The game has been teaching them this whole time. As soon as the player completes the first puzzle, there is a massive chess piece blocking their path to the next door, but it’s fake. An illusion using perspective to show that a 3D object can be 2D, so, naturally, a 2D object can be 3D. Perception is reality. The player has all the tools to solve the puzzle and all they need to do is use them.
The experience of solving this puzzle and the following puzzle doesn’t just feel unbelievable and amazing, it feels satisfying. Personally, the best part of solving a puzzle is that rush of putting together the pieces and feeling that ah ha moment. In Superliminal, the ah ha moment is replaced with your jaw dropping to the floor as the bigger picture is unveiled. When I have played other puzzle games, it feels like I’m trying to solve a problem that someone else created for me (which of course I am). In Superliminal, I feel like the puzzle has already been solved; I just need to find the right perspective to understand the solution.
Ethics:
The phrase in the ethics question “inside the box” is extremely funny when trying to answer this question for Superliminal. The game as a whole is playing with that notion of inside the box. It’s challenging every intuition that you have for how a puzzle should be solved. Like I said before, the solutions to the puzzle aren’t extremely difficult. In fact, the feels like the main source of difficulty comes from all your preconceived ideas of how a puzzle should be solved.
