I just finished playing through the indie hit Limbo for the first time (yes, I'm a few years late to this party). I loved the grainy black and white, multiplane camera aesthetic, as if a 1940s-era Disney brought to life the creepy violence of the original European fairy tales they recreated. Characters in the game react to you with unwavering hostility, seeming to stem from their own fear of the world they inhabit, in which everything is a threat.
The game's sound world is just as bleak. Beds of ambient gloom form a murky sonic backdrop, while the foreground sound is marked by its whip's-crack precision, punctuating your repeated death with a rusty exclamation point.
Dampness and decay dominate the first half of the game – decades of dirt fall like rain from rotten logs, and gooey liquid pours from limbs cracked off of giant insects. Abandoned industrial machinery provides the violence in the second half.
The game is DARK.
But also, like a fairy tale, enchanting. The puzzles are stimulating and rewarding, the physics feel great, and even the multiple attempts necessary to get through the more difficult sections feel less frustrating because of the fast pace of gameplay. And best of all, the sound and music make the hairs on the back of your neck tingle like crazy.
Limbo Composer and Sound Designer Martin Stig Andersen reflects on his approach:
I’ve never been fond of the traditional Hollywood soundtrack having a clear divide between music and sound design, as purely non-diegetic music tends to take me out of the experience." (source)
And to me, he succeeds. The world of Limbo feels rich and cohesive – the mood is consistently gauzy and dim throughout the visuals, score, sound design. It seems that all you want is to go home, but it's clear from the start that you have a long and dangerous journey ahead.
