#SUPERLIMINAL ALL FIRE ALARMS PC#
#SUPERLIMINAL ALL FIRE ALARMS SERIES#

The console version of the game does have one particular “secret” area now added that actually breaks the flow of the game and led to me needing to look up a guide. I learned never to get too comfortable with what I thought was happening, because it was apt to change briefly anyway. Object resizing is kind of the throughline that connects everything, but there’s… a lot more going on here. It’s about every gleeful “son of a bitch” and “what the fuck” I murmured as Superliminal used the power of video games to do what seems so insanely impossible. Where yet another mechanical twist shifts your already shifted perceptions, keeping you on your toes throughout. It’s about that moment where it clicks into place. It’s puzzles are never so tricky that they seem unfair. Superliminal’s goal is to make you the player feel smart and clever. “Perception is….”Įven in these early stages, there was always a joy in figuring out the puzzle solutions. But pretty soon, you’ll break beyond the boundaries-both figuratively and literally-and fall ever deeper into this dream state where anything is possible. A tiny wedge of cheese becomes an enormous ramp. A large object becomes small enough to pull through a tiny gap. The earliest puzzles are about shifting the size of objects based on how you see them. These tests serve as the building blocks for understanding how Superliminal wants you to think, literally and figuratively altering your perspective in order to solve a number of puzzles.

#SUPERLIMINAL ALL FIRE ALARMS SERIES#

A disembodied and mildly sinister AI voice, very obviously emulating Portal’s GLaDOS, begins guiding you through a series of preliminary tests.

Sometimes it’s about sheer execution of concept, and Superliminal thinks outside the box before diving back into the box, and then cloning the box within the box and thinking outside of both of them while firmly within a third you didn’t even realize exists. Not that one needs precision controls in a game like this, but it did make jumping on objects and reaching ledges sometimes more of a hassle than it should have been. My first reaction on loading it up was that it looked and felt a bit “budget.” The visuals are exceptionally simplistic, the controls a bit floaty and imprecise. Cue the console release, where Superliminal’s mind-bending, perception-altering puzzler finally comes to the living room. But being a console gamer, I didn’t bother looking into it much further. At the time, I remember seeing intriguing videos of the game’s signature “size is perspective” mechanic, where players resized objects based on their perspective.

#SUPERLIMINAL ALL FIRE ALARMS PC#

Superliminal first released for PC back in November 2019. It is as much within those categorical boxes as it is without.

A puzzle game that is about the adventure more than the puzzles, about how the player comes to the solutions more than the solutions themselves, Superliminal exists somewhere between Portal, The Witness, and an MC Escher painting, and yet is wholly unbound to being defined by those limitations. Superliminal is never quite what you think it is, and in that, it’s always exactly what it’s trying to be. Every time I think I’ve got Superliminal pegged, every time I think I’ve figured it out, it takes another left turn and defies my expectations. A smile creeps over my face and I shake my head, grinning.

“Son of a bitch…” I mutter too loudly under my breath for the 20th time.

Superliminal all fire alarms