Game-Art-HQ

Lost in Limbo / Trapped by the Giant Spider – by LukeTheRipper

The journey of the unnamed boy in Limbo starts in a forest where the player learns to know the controls, to explore the environments and well, he is also confronted by a giant Spider. The Boy manages to hurt the beast and escapes the first battle with it, but the Spider won’t give up its prey so easily. 

His second confrontation won’t be as lucky for the Boy as the first one and the Spider is able to capture him…for a while.

This is truly one of the scariest moments of Limbo. 

Limbo – A short monochrome story of an unnamed boy 

 – first released on the Xbox 360 21. July 2010, in 2011 ported to the Playstation 3 and PC, today available for every big platform including iOS & the Nintendo Switch

Indie Game developers were almost non-existant on the home consoles of the past but the digital marketplaces on the PC, Xbox, and Playstation systems changed the situation and made it possible for small teams, sometimes even single persons to sell their games without the help of a big publisher. We got games that looked like old NES or even Game Boy games for new systems like the Playstation 3 from small developer teams but also interesting concepts that offered a different type of gameplay, story or an art style never, or rarely seen in any of the bigger productions.

Limbo, by Playdead, a (back in 2010) small developer team from Denmark is one of those games that was different from all the big platformer games like Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog or the countless other jump’n runs that were released before..it was maybe inspired by the excellent Another World and Flashback games by Delphine Software in the early nineties but the whole feeling of the game was still very different.

Limbo has quite simple controls, seen in many other games before, you can’t even press a button to run faster but the boy can jump, use switches, climb ladders or pull something. There is almost no story in Limbo, hell even Dark Souls looks like a story-rich game in comparison, but the developers managed it give their game an own unique look through the monochromatic design, some type of movie like grain filters and scary environments that captures the player from the moment he starts to move the boy who tries to survive and get himself forward.

While there are only a few enemies like the giant spider, seen above, the environments, the game itself is the enemy of the player basically. The boy can be killed by almost everything, he even can’t swim ..and also has nothing by a health bar or multiple “Hearts”. However, he has unlimited attempts to beat the game and get past the many puzzles the environments offer. 

One of the big features of these are, that they are almost never the same. Where other games feature game mechanics that are repeated very often, like using the same combo again and again in  a beat’em up or get past similar puzzles..like in the classic Tomb Raider games as an example, Limbo offers very different riddles that involve different kinds of physics ..and logic. 

It is “only” around 3-5 hours long..a bit more maybe if you try and find really every secret by yourself it does not feel short thanks to the changes in the environments and the different game mechanics. It is also a video game that is perfect to play with your partner, a friend or a family member nearby that helps with the puzzles.

Limbo became one of the most successful indie games of its time, it was and is praised by countless game magazines and websites. In 2013, Playdead announced they sold over 3 million copies of the game already, it also made it to Playstation Plus, Xbox Games with Gold and was given away for free on Steam and more recently the Epic Game Store as well. Playdead released a similar game named Inside in 2016 and is now working on their third game. They created Limbo with a core team of only 8 people, expanding to 16 at various stages with freelancers. Today in 2019, Playdead has around 40 employees. 

The Artist behind our Illustration for Limbo:

Luke the Ripper from Poland is on board Game-Art-HQ since almost the birth of our community and contributed around thirty pieces in his unique “Tribal” style for multiple projects ranging from the Fighting Game Projects like our first community art collaboration ever, the Battle Arena Toshinden Tribute and his take on Kayin for it in October 2011, later the Legend of Zelda Bestiary, the Link’s Blacklist, our Street Fighter Anniversary Project and all of our Generation based Pokemon Tributes so far..among others!

Luke was actually one of the artists that asked for a Pokemon Project by our community a long time ago already, and I was glad we could finally start one in 2016

Have a look at his whole gallery on dA here please!