Indie Spotlight: LIMBO

 There aren't that many games today that are so immediately unique as LIMBO. It's colorless, quiet, and simple. You may only run, jump, and grab certain objects. Such gameplay reminds me of the bright days of the old school Mario games that I, and many others, first cut our gamer's teeth on. This is by no means a Mario game though. LIMBO is a dark, mysterious, and cheerless place where bodies litter the ground and nothing holds good intentions toward you. In part, it is this fact that makes the game so unique. There is no color in the game whatsoever; only black, white, and the shades of gray in between. To break up the monotony of a plain black and white 2D plane, the developers at Playdead included a foreground and background that are separated from the playable plane by the camera's depth of field. In other words, the camera focuses on where you walk, but blurs everything in front of it and behind it. This gives the world a real sense of depth, even though you are actually restricted to a 2D plane.

Sound in LIMBO is nearly non-existent, but I believe it was an intentional decision. Though a great deal of the game's atmosphere can be attributed to its visuals, the lack of any constant music or sound dramatically adds to the tension and expectation of seeing the next trap just a moment too late. The limited sounds and music that are there however, are well crafted and adds to the experience in the best possible ways. In all honesty though, the silence is more profound than the sound. If you play this game, turn off any noise around you and listen as you play. You will hardly hear anything for some time, and it will be a great deal more engrossing than you think.

The story is also nearly non-existent, but it works for the setting. LIMBO's description on Steam consists of one line that tells the entire story. That description reads: “Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters LIMBO”. That is everything you need to know to understand why you are where you are and why you're doing what you're doing. The story does not develop or progress beyond that singular goal until the very end, where you are then sitting back, watching the credits roll, and appreciating the amazing experience you have just had.

Speaking of the credits, you will be seeing them very soon after beginning the game; as LIMBO only lasts three hours for a decently experienced player. Those three hours will be among the most memorable of your gaming career though. The game is well worth the $10 admission to anyone who appreciates unique and memorable experiences. Overall, LIMBO, alongside other greats like Amnesia, Terraria, and Minecraft, displays the great power of the indie developer, and should not be missed by any self-respecting gamer.

LIMBO Overall Score:

Indie Spotlight: Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Let me get this out of the way here and now, I don't do horror; whether it be books, movies, or games. I generally just don't do it, ever. Sure, I know Bioshock could be considered horror to a degree, I don't really see Bioshock as TRUE horror. What I mean by true horror is the complete and utter feeling of helplessness and being completely defenseless. It's when you have such dread of going around the next corner that you'll sit and gather your wits for 5 minutes before proceeding, or you simply turn the game off altogether and find something cheery to do so you can calm down. So it makes it all the more surprising to me that I actually played Amnesia: The Dark Descent to its completion, AND that I thoroughly enjoyed it! Granted, I couldn't play it alone at any point of the game as I would become way too freaked out; so my cousin (who convinced me to try the game in the first place) helped me with it.

Amnesia is brought to us by Frictional Games, the same folks behind the Penumbra series. You're probably going to hear me say this a lot in this column, but indie developers have so much more creative freedom to realize their visions than big name development houses with publishers on their backs needing a massive profit. Amnesia is a prime example of this; as I seriously believe you will not get an experience like it at this point from any big name developer. Publishers are quite finicky I hear, and rarely stray from green-lighting cookie-cutter games for fear of losing money. Amnesia breaks many conventions of what survival-horror currently is, and shows that the genre can be so much more! If I were someone working in a game publishing company, I would be watching Frictional Games with great interest indeed.

With all of that said, Amnesia is anything but cookie-cutter. You begin the game stumbling through a dark castle talking to yourself. You are reminding yourself of your name, Daniel, and where you're from. As you're constantly telling yourself to focus, you black out and wake up sometime later sprawled on the floor in the middle of a random hall. The only memories you have are your name and where you live; everything else is gone. You have Amnesia; pretty hard to guess right? As you get up, you notice a trail of florescent red liquid (though it also looks like rose petals a bit) leading into room after room. It's dark, very dark, and you find some tinderboxes to light the extinguished candles and torches with. Eventually you come upon a letter addressed to you, but it's also from you. You discover that you've somehow made yourself forget everything you've ever done. You're then given a most grizzly task, to find Alexander Brenennburg, the lord of the castle you're in, and murder him. Without any more information than that, you find yourself with little choice but to head forward and listen to your past self.

I'm not going to say anymore about the specifics of the story, but I will say that the story never drops in quality until perhaps the very end. It's primarily told in flashbacks you have in certain rooms, and scattered letters you find from yourself and other former residents of castle Brenennburg that tell of your previous exploits and give background as to why you're here. This encourages you to explore every nook and cranny you can find for more information to continue the story. It's very possible to pass by a letter with vital information, and you become lost in the story because of the gaps it leaves. I'm a very thorough person though, so exploring in a game like this is very natural to me; but it may prove tedious or difficult to those with slightly shorter attention spans. The story can also be a little predictable at times, but that should by no means distract from the excellent tale that it is.

Gameplay wise, Amnesia is probably as survival-horror as you can get. Daniel is not a super-soldier, the chosen one, a mutant, mage, Spartan, or anything else you can think of that can wipe out legions of enemies by little more than blinking. Daniel is a man, an ordinary man, and he's scared to the point of insanity; literally. Along with his physical health, you must also manage Daniel's mental stability. When Daniel sees something disturbing, and he will quite frequently, his mental faculties will become more and more rattled. At first, this has little effect on him except for a little blurry vision. As he loses grip on reality even further however, he will begin to suffer from severely blurred vision, very hard heart beats, hallucinations of roaches crawling all over his body, stumbling, and eventually blacking out. Considering that the game is set in 1839, there's no Xanax sitting around castle Brenennburg for Daniel to calm himself down with. Instead, he regains his barrings on reality by solving moderately difficult puzzles to progress throughout the castle.

Daniel can also take preventative measures to keep his mind in check by staying in well-lit areas. Where there's no light in an area already, Daniel can create it by either using tinderboxes to light some of the extinguished torches and candles, or use his lantern. Both are very limited resources, but if can manage them properly, they'll go a very long way and you'll rarely find yourself wanting. If you're a wasteful kind of person though, you're going to need to learn better habits, and fast!

Aside from the disturbing events Daniel witnesses, the four enemies of the game will drain his sanity faster than you can shout “Holy reanimated corpses Batman!”. In all, the enemies include the darkness, what Fuzzy (my cousin) and I call the Water-Demon, the Gatherers, and the Shadow. I know it seems a little redundant that there's the darkness and the Shadow, but they are actually two different things. The darkness is very literally the darkness all around you. Without any light to combat it, it will drain your sanity to the point where any slight disturbance will have Daniel stumbling and screaming for his mummy (yea, he's British). The Shadow on the other hand, is an actual being that you never actually see, but you know it's there from the roaring and the fleshy boils and sacks that cover every surface of the environment and hurt Daniel when touched. The Water-Demon lives, you guessed it, in the water and chases anything that enters its domain. You never actually see it either, but you know it's there by the footsteps splashing on top of the water as it relentlessly pursues you. The Gatherers are the most common enemy second to the darkness, and look like mutilated and disfigured corpses that roam the halls of castle Brenennburg. By simply looking directly at them, Daniel's sanity begins to drop like a lead weight. If Daniel is seen by it, it will chase him until he can lose its line of sight and hide. Once hidden for a minute or so, the Gatherer loses interest, leaves, and disappears into thin air.

The presentation that ties all of this together is absolutely phenomenal! I have no idea what engine Amnesia is made on, but I would love to know because it almost has an Oblivion vibe in my opinion. Either way, for being stuck in a dark castle for the entire game, the environment is surprisingly diverse. From laboratories, to engine rooms, to sewers, to kitchens, to dungeons, to even a morgue, it's all here, and it all looks great! Everything is also powered by physics, especially the doors and other opening and closing objects. When opening a door, you need to hold left-click and move your mouse forward or backward and the door will move at the speed you move your mouse. This adds another element of caution because opening doors faster or making excessive noise with objects will draw unwanted attention from nearby Gatherers. As great as the visuals and physics are though, the real star of the presentation is by far the sound. The game could look absolutely hideous (thankfully it doesn't), and it would still be terrifying from the sound design alone. I can't tell you how many times I instinctively looked behind myself after hearing a random shuffling, whispering, voices, screaming, wind blowing, and various other oddities. The music is very subtle and ambient, hardly noticeable but enough so to greatly effect your mood and apprehension level. Frictional Games did such an amazing job on the sound design, I'm going to flat-out demand that they win an award for it at the next Independent Games Festival! Overall, Frictional Games has a real gem on their hands with Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and I highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in horror!

Amnesia: The Dark Descent Overall Score:

PC System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
• Processor: 1.5Ghz - Low budget CPUs such as Celeron or Duron needs to be at about twice the CPU speed
• Memory: 1 GB
• Hard Drive: TBD
• Graphics: Radeon 9600/GeForceFX - Integrated graphics and very low budget cards might not work.

Mac System Requirements

Minimum:
• OS: Mac OS X 10.5.8 or newer
• Processor: 2.0Ghz
• Memory: 1 GB RAM
• Graphics: Radeon X1000/GeForce 6 (Integrated Intel Graphics not supported)
• Hard Drive: 2GB space free

Indie Spotlight: The Ball

I think it would be safe to say that I’m not the only person that loved Portal. It was limited in what you could do, with your only tool being your Portal gun, but it was that limitation that allowed the game to focus and excel the way it did. Had there been traditional shooter mechanics in Portal, I feel like the game would have spread its unique gameplay opportunities, which is really what Portal is about in the first place, too thin. With all of that said, The Ball is cut very heavily from the Portal cloth.

Brought to us by Teotl Studios, The Ball began as a mod for Unreal Tournament 3, and was then released as a stand-alone game soon after the release of Epic’s Unreal Development Kit. For those not in the know, UDK is basically a free version of Unreal Engine 3 with a lot of the source code left unavailable. Even without the engine’s source code however, it’s still very possible to make just about anything with the proper know-how. Teotl Studios obviously has such know-how, because aside from the visuals, you would never know that it used to be an Unreal Tournament 3 mod.

At this point, I would try and explain the game’s story, but there really isn’t one to speak of. You’re basically just some archeologist or something that gets trapped in a cave that turns into some underground temple. Upon further exploration, you discover a mysterious looking gun with little to no purpose for the moment. It doesn’t take long though before you discover the Ball itself, and the gun you’ve found makes its use abundantly clear. With the gun, you can attract and repel the Ball. At that point and until the end of the game, the Ball is your best and only friend. It helps you solve puzzles, lights your way in dark areas, and is your offensive and defensive weapon. It is your baby, so take it with you everywhere you go!

Considering how important the Ball is then, it makes the game all the more devious in how often it keeps the Ball from you. When you’re not solving puzzles with the Ball, you’re solving puzzles to retrieve the Ball. It’s particularly rough when the game throws any enemy at you when the Ball is out of your reach. On those occasions, the best policy is to keep moving and not stop for even a second. It is helpful that the gun can slightly push your pursuers away, but it also can’t kill them. Speaking of the enemies, they can be quite effective in evading the Ball when you hurl it in their direction and even when you’re trying to hit them from behind. This makes combat much more intense and difficult than you might think. The Ball is controlled completely by physics, and thus your momentum and direction matter a great deal. It can also be difficult to bring the Ball back to you immediately after launching it because you need to stop the forward motion you’ve created and reverse it. This can cost you precious seconds when a horde of mummies are headed right for you. It’s not a problem, I just point it out because it adds to the intensity of combat.

The visuals in the game are very nice, especially considering the entire game is underground. All of the textures are high-res and detailed except for possibly the larger rock textures. That’s not a major issue though, because it’s rarely seen. The gun, Ball, and enemies are particularly well done, with the finest details covering every aspect of their models. The environments are well thought out, and make the puzzles appropriately difficult, but not impossible.

If I had any complaints about the game (aside from the weak story, which I can forgive because of the excellent gameplay), it would be in the sound. You’re going to be hearing the sound of your gun pushing the Ball around for roughly 6 of the 7 hours the game takes to complete. While it is a great sound, it’s so loud that it overpowers most of the other sounds and the music. The music I was able to hear was very nice, but I probably missed most of the score because of the Ball’s movement sound. The voice-acting was also admittedly bland and mostly uninteresting, but I will give the voice-actors an A for effort. You’ve gotta start somewhere right? I would suggest adding a little more enthusiasm to the performances, instead of just reading solely from the script. Keep practicing voice-actors, you’ll get it!

Overall, you’re going to be playing The Ball for its gameplay and not much else. Considering how great the gameplay here actually is though, I would say that any of the issues with the story and sound can be easily overlooked. Great job Teotl Studios! I look forward to whatever you come up with next!

The Ball Overall Score:

              System Requirements

• OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista, or Windows 7
• Processor: 2.0+ GHz or better (dual core recommended)
• Memory: 1 GB (2 GB recommended)
• Graphics: SM3 Compatible video card (GF6800 minimum - GF8800 or higher recommended)          
• DirectX®: DirectX® 9
• Hard Drive: 1.5 GB
• Sound: DirectX® 9-compatible