Superliminal is an upcoming first-person forced-perspective puzzle game where one enters into a world outside the rules of what we perceive to be reality. The trailer toys with its viewer, making us question everything we may learn about the world inside the game.
Developer Pillow Castle has been long at work on their creative title. Prior to being renamed Superliminal, the game was titled Museum of Simulation Technology and appears to have first been teased in 2014. The original trailer has been viewed over two million times, and now, we are seeing an updated and more polished work through the new Superliminal name.
As the trailer shows, forcing a shift in perspective can alter reality as we know it. Placing a small dollhouse suddenly enlarges it and provides a new venue of exploration. The potential for storytelling and gameplay is fantastic based on what we have seen so far, with challenging puzzles waiting to be solved.
The long development time is likely attributed to the humble beginnings of the game, which was a tech demo created by a group of students at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center.
If this sounds familiar, that may be because The Outer Wilds had a similar story of its origin, where the idea and early concept of the game was a part of the final project work of the developer’s education.
The developers are describing the game as a puzzle game where your perception and perspective of the objects around you is the key to success. Literally, think outside the box. Kick the box. Flip the box and get inside the box!
In viewing the trailer, one imagines a cross between the problem-solving skills of Portal with the potential for storytelling focusing on the mind. It will be interesting to see how the world is explained, if at all. Are the characters stuck inside some strange world, or are we within the mind of someone else?
There is a moment in the trailer where the player falls down towards what would seem like doom but is in fact a bed with too many pillows. Will the game also dabble in psychological horror? We can only speculate for now, but the possibilities seem wide open.
Pillow Castle will be bringing Superliminal to PAX West in Seattle August 30 - September 2. Although there is still no release date, one must imagine that after five years of development, there must be a release date on the horizon.
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