Minimalism is a style of art that I believe is often misunderstood.
Many simply label it is "art where you do less work," which might technically be true,
but it ignores the guiding principle of minimalism: doing more by doing less.
Minimalist art is not simplistic for simplicity's sake; the artist is attempting
to produce a complex piece of artwork through techniques reduced to their simplest elements.
It's a movement that aims to get away from the loud and bombastic
and instead appreciate the quiet and mundane.
Minimalism takes many forms and can be applied to just about any artistic medium, including video games.
You often see these games come from indie studios that don't have the budget
to deliver the flashy, in-your-face style the majority of AAA games have,
and one of those studios that excels at minimalist game design is the Danish company Playdead.
The developer only has two games under their belt, Limbo and Inside,
but both have received widespread acclaim, are often cited as two of the best indie games of all time,
and have cemented the company as masters of minimalism in video games.
But what makes these two games work so well when they deliberately
trade out many of the elements that make other games stand out?
How does Playdead create games that aren't huge or expansive,
but still deliver an impact that lasts long after you put down the controller?
This is Limbo and Inside.
Playdead's history begins with Arnt Jensen, a former artist at IO Interactive
who left the company in 2006 and formed Underholdingsbranchen, which would later turn into Playdead.
During his time at IO, he drew sketches for the project that became Limbo,
but soon realized he needed help to see it come to life,
so he released a concept trailer to help attract people interested in working on the game.
This led to programmer Dino Patti joining Jensen at Playdead,
though the two knew they couldn't bear the cost of development on their own,
so they secured grants from the Danish government and funding from investors.
The team grew to eight core people during Limbo's development,
with up to sixteen developers when accounting for freelance work.
The work included creating a custom game engine
and recreating the concepts that Jensen had in mind for narrative and gameplay sequences.
The end result was released on July 21st, 2010 for the Xbox Live Arcade
for Microsoft's Summer of Arcade event, though it has since been released
on every major console of the seventh and eighth generations.
Limbo received overwhelmingly positive reviews for its art, puzzles, and atmosphere,
and was so financially successful that a year after its launch,
Playdead paid off its investors and became an independent company.
Immediately after Limbo was released, the company began work on their second title,
a spiritual successor to Limbo called Inside.
Inside was partially funded by the Danish Film Institute and was developed using Unity
rather than Limbo's engine to reduce Playdead's workload.
It was announced during the Microsoft presentation at E3 2014
and was initially slated for a 2015 release, though it was eventually delayed to 2016.
Inside launched on Xbox One on June 29th and was later released
on Windows, Playstation 4, iOS, Mac, and Nintendo Switch.
Inside received even higher praise than Limbo, with many describing it as "like Limbo but better"
and specifically highlighting its ability to tell a complex and engaging story without any dialogue.
The reputation of these games precede them, but let's now examine how they create a minimalist experience
that has multiple layers in its gameplay, aesthetics, and narrative.
Limbo begins with an unnamed boy waking up in a forest who goes on a quest to save his sister,
and Inside begins with a different unnamed boy travelling through a forest
on his way to a facility containing a dark secret.
Right out of the gate, we see Playdead's commitment to forgoing explicit details
in favor of providing the player with a sense of natural discovery.
The games start with short cutscenes that communicate barely anything,
with the boy in Limbo rising from his sleep
and the boy in Inside entering the forest — no introductory text or dialogue that explains anything.
You have no idea what the boys are doing there,
and there aren't any explicit tutorials telling you what you're able to do gameplay-wise.
The games push you right into the action, relying on your own curiosity to begin the adventure proper.
The controls of both Limbo and Inside are incredibly simple;
all the player is able to do is walk, jump, and interact with objects.
Both of the boys feel fairly heavy and aren't able to jump very high,
but they'll automatically grab onto ledges if they're within reach.
You can interact with static objects in the environment,
as well as objects that can be repositioned or manipulated in some way.
This is the real meat of the gameplay; figuring out what objects can be interacted with
and in what way, and then determining how that object can help you solve the game's challenges.
When the games need to teach you how something works,
it does so through practical examples rather than forced direction.
It's similar to the concept of the "silent tutorial," where a game will show you
how a mechanic works through a more organic means
as opposed to text or dialogue that literally spells it out.
But Limbo and Inside work on experimentation and trial and error,
giving you the tools needed to progress and no other instructions.
This provides a more fulfilling way of discovering how the game works and what you're able to do,
increasing the satisfying feeling of solving a puzzle and demonstrating
how you can teach the player so much by giving them as little information as possible.
With so few controls to work with, all the developers have to do
is place an object in the world and make it distinguishable from the scenery,
and the player will instinctively interact with it to see what it does.
Situations like this showcase the reductive side of minimalistic design,
as simplifying the gameplay to its basic functions shows how little is required
to give the player the info they need without resorting to expository fluff.
Limbo and Inside's worlds are filled with what I'll call "rooms"
that interconnect seamlessly with one another,
each containing a specific objective and a puzzle that must be solved to complete it.
Often, the objective is as simple as "get from one side of the room to the other,"
but there's usually some type of obstacle blocking your way that you need to figure out how to overcome.
Calling them puzzles isn't entirely accurate, but they are distinguishing gameplay segments
that fill up each room, interchanged with segments of the boys walking through a location.
While the main adventure follows a distinct linear path, there are occasional detours
that lead to hidden collectibles; in Limbo's case, the eggs, and in Inside's case, the generators.
These are not required to beat the game, but if you collect them all,
you're able to unlock secret endings that can be activated once you beat the game.
Limbo and Inside may be very bare-bones mechanically, but the rooms are all unique in their own way,
providing set pieces that challenge the player in different manners.
The knowledge you gain in one room will help you in the next,
but it won't give you everything you need since each room has something new to offer.
The puzzles rely on both figuring out how you're meant to use the tools at your disposal
and being able to properly execute the solution.
Many of the games' puzzles are timed, requiring the player
to perform the right action at the right time, with failure to do it properly meaning death.
Both games are fairly generous with checkpoints, so dying repeatedly usually isn't an issue,
but it creates a feeling of tension that permeates throughout the entire game.
Limbo and Inside are intimidating just from a visual perspective, but adding in the high pressure
of the gameplay absorbs the player right into the intense scenarios the games place you in.
But on the subject of visuals, they, along with the sound, worldbuilding, and narrative,
are where Limbo and Inside really shine, as well as where Playdead's commitment
to minimalist design is the most obvious.
Both games utilize graphical techniques to obscure certain parts of your surroundings
and illuminate others, with every room drifting off into a seemingly endless void.
All you know for certain is the path ahead of and behind the character,
but as for what lies beyond that, the player will never know for sure.
Obviously, this is done to benefit the 2D platforming, since the player should first and foremost
be focused on the plane that the boys can travel on, but when considering the worlds as a whole,
it's difficult to discern what you're looking at sometimes just from a passing glance.
This works because the worlds of Limbo and Inside are, on many levels, strange and foreign,
even if many elements are familiar or recognizable.
If you had a clearer picture of everything visible on screen,
the sense of mystery surrounding the locations you travel through would be lost.
Limbo features a grayscale palette that leans heavily on the dark side,
emphasizing black and dark grey and only rarely showing off whiter shades.
More than any other grayscale game, Limbo got me thinking
about how black and white are used in video games on a technical and artistic level.
Some developers use it because of the limitations of the hardware they're working with
or to avoid detailed coloring, but when it's a deliberate artistic choice,
it takes on a whole new meaning in and of itself.
Black and white are complete opposites, and have many metaphorical meanings based on this;
light vs. dark, good vs. evil, life vs. death, etc.
The basic principle is that white represents something pure or righteous
while black represents something corrupted or vulgar.
When you reduce a palette to these two colors, it's easy for the color choices
to take their own identity in relation to the game's atmosphere.
What you take from Limbo's use of colors is going to depend on your interpretation of the narrative,
but Limbo's focus on black over white is, in my mind, emblematic of the game's darker themes.
When you only have two major colors to work with, those colors serve one of two purposes:
one represents solid objects (or things that are real),
and the other represents the background void (or abstract space).
Limbo chooses black as the object color, as the boy, the level terrain, and the objects you interact with
are all rendered in stark black while the background elements mix in shades of white and grey.
But the game also uses color, as well as depth of field, to make parts of the world
appear muddy and indistinct, with lighter areas of the background in particular
being incredibly hard to make out precise shapes and objects.
The darkness is the strongest element, having a sort of visual foothold
that the grey and white objects and areas don't have.
In this world, only the darkest things make any sense, because the lighter something is,
the more difficult it is to process and understand.
In other words, the sheer power of the darkness suffocates
and absorbs whatever meaning the lightness has, just like a black hole.
Inside portrays a wider spectrum of color but follows a similar principle,
as the color palette is dark and muted, with even brightly-lit areas
suffering from plenty of desaturation and bleakness in its colors.
In the world of Inside, nothing is allowed to flourish, and the oppressive society
that rules over it has literally sucked the color out of everything.
This extends to both the natural terrain that you start the game in
and the facility that you infiltrate, which rarely show any real sign of life.
The exception to this is the boy, whose bright red shirt
makes him stand out against the sterile environments.
The boy intentionally clashes against the colors of his surroundings,
contrasting him with the grim horrors happening around him.
It's both a visual indicator of where the player character is
in relation to other objects and a parallel note with the atmosphere of the world at large.
Inside chooses a simple 3D style for its objects, with rounded character models that lack facial features
and scenery objects that are more explicit that Limbo's but are rendered in a semi-blocky style.
All the objects are distinguishable as their real-world counterparts but are a little more abstract,
not fully resembling the objects they represent while coming close enough for the sake of understanding.
One of the core minimalist techniques is extracting the basic elements of your subject
and pushing them to the center, and Inside demonstrates that perfectly
through its almost-realistic but still stylized visuals.
The world of Inside appears to be familiar because we can recognize the objects within,
even if they are abstract, but this facade becomes broken the further you get
and the more we see of the society that inhabits it.
But the visuals aren't the only aspect of the games that is deliberately understated,
because that philosophy also applies to the sound design.
The sound effects are processed with reverb, echo, and audio smoothing techniques,
creating an auditory experience that doesn't have the crispest quality
but instead has sounds that seem to flow in and out of each other.
It's almost as if the sounds exist in a free-moving physical state
and are not just confined to the objects they originate from,
echoing throughout the corners of the world that the sound can reach.
Because of the ambience of the rooms you travel through, sounds don't immediately stop,
instead trailing off and mingling with other SFX before they eventually fade into nothingness.
Many of the sounds you hear are very visceral, not just because of the subject making the sound,
but also the tone of the sound effects themselves.
It creates an unsettling audio track as you play through the game,
which is doubled by the stereo audio fading in sounds as objects come into view.
The music for both games was composed by Martin Stig Andersen,
though Inside's soundtrack was co-created by SØS Gunver Ryberg.
Limbo and Inside use music perfectly, only playing it when necessary
and not even using full songs in some cases in favor of small snippets.
Playdead inserts bits of the soundtrack at carefully-determined intervals not
in order to create the mood, but to enhance it.
Too often, the mood of a level is generated by the music, because it starts playing too soon
and doesn't let you take in the visual atmosphere first to reach a unified determination
on the feelings a world wants to evoke.
That's not the case here, as songs play at just the right moments
to boost the established mood and not be the sole element carrying them.
Both Limbo and Inside's soundtracks fall within the ambient genre,
usually revolving around simple drones and pads that swell up and down
in intensity to create a different sound or level of tension.
Rarely do the songs use any percussion, and when they do, it's not to keep a beat going,
but to add another layer to the soundscapes.
[MUSIC]
The music wasn't designed necessarily to stand out on its own,
but instead provide a backing note to the game's atmosphere.
That's the benefit of Andersen not just acting as the composer, but also the audio director,
as he directly influences how the audio and music create their own kind of atmosphere
that compliment the visuals and narrative.
You can listen to these songs on their own, but without the context of the sequences they play in,
you miss out on the full impact of the music.
I think these soundtracks do hold up if you listen to them separately,
but that's because I have a deep love of the ambient genre,
and it's not the way the music was intended to be listened to.
Without the game's sound effects adding to the soundscapes,
the music doesn't fully do the job it was created to do,
and, crucially, it removes the music's impact on the games' worldbuilding.
I've already talked a little bit about the worlds in Limbo and Inside,
but it's fascinating how much of the worldbuilding rises to the surface naturally
and isn't forced upon the player.
You can miss plenty of the little aspects that add to the world,
since most require either a keen eye or for the player to go off the beaten path.
In both games, the world almost seems to adapt to your actions,
changing as the boys get closer and closer to their goals.
Limbo and Inside have a predetermined sequence of events, so this is an illusion,
but one so carefully crafted that even if you scrutinize it afterwards,
that feeling isn't lost if you replay the games.
Part of why this works is that the worlds are, compared to our own,
unnatural and alienating — but only just enough to put us on edge.
The locations never become so strange that you feel completely isolated from it,
but you still need to put in a little bit of work to become attached to them,
which I think is a wonderful way to create a fantasy world.
Limbo's world combines several familiar locations and arranges them in a way
that we might be able to make sense of if we knew what the world we travel through actually is.
The boy starts his journey through a forest, but will also visit caves,
an abandoned cityscape, mines, a factory, and so on.
These are locations we understand, but as for the backdrop setting
meant to unify all these places into a cohesive world, we have no idea what it is.
Many have postulated guesses, with the most common being that the world
is right in the title — limbo, the plane between heaven and hell
where souls not worthy of either ascension or damnation are doomed to be stuck in.
Limbo is sometimes represented as a state of nothingness, a deep and expansive void,
and while this world does have physical landscapes,
the lack of any visible end could suggest an endless sea of emptiness.
Another theory is that the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic or fantasy world,
one where modern amenities like hotels are rejected or abandoned.
That would explain why there are giant spiders wandering around,
why there are mind-controlling parasites everywhere,
and why the only other humans — the warrior boys — are hostile to you in an almost tribal manner.
Whatever the world is, its combination of the fantastic and the realistic leads to a fascinating
and sometimes terrifying land that feels as bleak and hopeless as its namesake suggests.
Inside takes the concept of a world that we can only partially understand
and goes in a slightly different direction, focusing less on reducing
what the player can see and more on designing a bleak, oppressive world.
The game seemingly depicts the boy against a society that seeks to control humanity,
but I say seemingly because A) this is never confirmed, even if it is heavily implied,
and B) we never learn the state of the world at large.
We can judge the state of the immediate area and theorize what led to this group coming into power,
but without evidence indicating what happened to the world that allowed this to happen,
all we can do is speculate.
Inside's world feels more grounded in reality than Limbo's,
which comes as a result of the game not being as ambiguous with its setting.
The majority of the game takes place inside a giant facility,
but before that you'll explore farmlands, city rooftops, forests, and dark bodies of water.
They're connected in a way that feels logical, and while there are fantastical elements
such as the zombie humans and the siren creatures, they feel like a natural addition
that a facility like this would conduct experiments on.
It's the facility that's the most intriguing aspect of this world,
because while we somewhat know what they're doing in there, we don't know to what end.
We know the researchers are controlling people and experimenting
with potentially dangerous creatures, but why go through all of this?
The answer, I believe, is the world.
The facility sticks out as looking brand new compared to the areas that come before it,
which appear abandoned and lifeless by comparison.
Maybe the researchers built this facility to solve a major problem affecting the entire world,
or at least the area around them, and that desperation
led them to abandon places outside the labs to focus on that issue.
The events in the game are seen through the eyes of the two boys,
who experience everything that happens as we do.
Effectively, the boys' journeys become our journeys, and while they mostly don't react to things
that are happening on-screen, that works in letting the player's own reactions shine through.
But even if the boys don't explicitly communicate what they're feeling,
that doesn't mean they're completely devoid of any meaningful personality.
These games aren't character-driven narratives,
but the ways in which Playdead shows what the boys are thinking are great for storytelling.
Both boys have animations tied to specific events that indicate their mental state,
and listening to the boy in Inside breathing heavily or frantically
highlights the tension of his current situation.
Again, these are small details that most players wouldn't even notice,
but they add something to the narrative that's hard to ignore.
And it compounds the fact that these boys are just that — boys, children,
kids who, in an ideal world, wouldn't be exposed to any of this.
Putting a child in these kinds of situations in fiction is designed to play
to the audience's vulnerability and natural desire to protect the young.
Of course, the terror and anxiety would still be there if an adult were to experience this,
but that works on a different kind of horror.
In games where you control an adult character, scary situations
typically are meant to scare the player rather than the character
because the characters are able to process what's happening given enough time.
But in Limbo and Inside, you're controlling young kids who may not fully comprehend the world around them
and the actions they are forced to undertake as they continue on their adventure.
The boys understand that the things around them are dangerous,
but while the player can think about the implications of the nature of the world of Limbo
or the research conducted in Inside's labs, the boys probably can't.
There's a threat that the player is aware of that is likely going over the boys' heads,
and so we must guide them safely and help them achieve their goals.
Playdead knew exactly when to build up the suspense of the moment
and when to slow things down and focus on the overarching sense of dread.
Limbo and Inside are unsettling throughout, but the intensity of each individual moment
depends on what comes before or after it.
This is a common method of storytelling in horror:
alternating between calm and energetic scenes to create a balance of tension.
The quiet moments put your mind at ease and distract you from the craziness,
and the energetic moments snap you into a state of fear.
With stories that are as strange and horrific as these, having places to just take your mind off
of deciphering new information about the plot can help you absorb and comprehend everything.
It's when the game presents life-threatening situations that more details about the narrative
come into view, and learning how each area and threat is connected to one another
becomes a crucial aspect of the story.
But you may have noticed that I've only been talking about how the narrative is built
and told to the player, not about the story itself.
That's because, as you know if you've played the game, there's very little
in terms of actual plot in Limbo and Inside.
Both are distinctly linear adventures with only one objective
assuming you're not going for the alternate endings,
and Playdead follows the principle of "it's the journey that matters, not the destination."
The stories of Limbo and Inside can best be described as a bunch of individual set pieces
that offer a separate experience but also come together to form a loose but connected narrative.
Limbo has essentially no story elements beyond the basic premise,
and while the other characters may represent some deeper meaning,
for the most part, their only purpose is to serve as an obstacle.
And while the boy does eventually reunite with his sister, the game cuts away
before any definitive ending can be achieved.
Inside's story is a little more cut-and-dry, in that its ending is longer
and provides a more tangible conclusion,
albeit one that still leaves a huge amount of room for interpretation.
The physical movements of the story are much more obvious here, but again, Playdead deliberately withholds
crucial information such as purpose and meaning behind the game's narrative.
That information isn't necessary to enjoy the adventures, but thanks to the lack of detail,
much of what you take away from the game isn't concrete.
It's that lack of detail that has led to many theories regarding the stories and themes,
as well as what the alternate endings mean for the narrative.
Because the games give you so little in tangible details,
you're left to interpret a lot on your own, and because of that,
many people have shared their unique analysis on what the games ultimately mean.
Personally, I think Limbo is about confronting both the light and darkness of one's soul
and Inside is about control and rebellion against it.
In Limbo, the boy's quest to save his sister also becomes a quest
of realizing the darkness that is corrupting himself.
I don't think the world is limbo itself, but is instead the physical world,
and the dangers that the boy faces through the game are real.
As the boy ventures forward, however, he begins confronting his dark side
as shown through the destruction of the eggs.
Eggs are a representation of life, and the boy uncaringly destroys them,
as well as the other creatures who, yes, were hostile,
but the boy will kill them and use their bodies to help him move onward without a second thought.
That is the prison the boy is trapped in, a metaphorical one
that can only be escaped by the destruction of the darkness within his soul.
To do that, his soul must be freed, which is represented in the final puzzle.
The boy realizes that his body must perish if his soul is to be cleansed,
and sacrifices himself to break the barrier between his body and soul.
In his dying moments, he sees a vision of his sister, indicating that the boy
did save her after all — but his soul is now stuck in the afterlife
and must go on a journey of its own to save the life of the boy.
I believe that the secret level actually is limbo, and making it through this area,
filled with intense darkness that eventually gives way to light,
shows that the soul is worthy of ascending back into a physical form.
The boy rides the elevator back into the real world and reincarnates,
having saved the life of his sister and rescued his soul from corruption.
As for Inside, the narrative theme of control is very apparent,
at first represented through an apparently bleak and oppressive society.
The game first suggests that the group of humans that oppose the boy
are the ones in control in this world, establishing order
and dictating how food is grown and how technology and resources — including people — are used.
But there's also evidence that the power this group has over the world isn't absolute,
as the farmlands being deserted and the siren creature swimming freely
shows that the group has not fully taken command over everything.
That leads us to the Huddle, which many speculate is the being
who is really in control, at least regarding the boy.
Some, including myself, believe that the Huddle is influencing the boy
from the very beginning, which is why he's drawn to the facility.
It's also why some scientists help the Huddle as it escapes,
though the ones who run away or try to recapture it shows that its powers aren't absolute.
So who does have absolute control in the end? Well, it's us.
We are the ones guiding the boy, the ones who command the Huddle to escape,
and the ones that can take away the power these entities have.
The generators represent the removal of power from the characters
and the placing of power into the player's hands.
Because the Huddle's escape relies on the player's input,
the Huddle needs to trust that we will accept its fate as shown in the normal ending,
but we can reject that ending by pulling the secret switch.
We relinquish our control over the boy essential
for the Huddle's plan succeeding — an ending that turns the boy into a lifeless object
but also prevents him from experiencing an arguably worse fate.
But that's just scratching the surface, and I could go on and on
regarding my thoughts on the story and themes and what the games ultimately mean.
You can view the game much differently than I do and draw your own conclusions
from Limbo and Inside, which I think is a beautiful thing.
Regardless of how you interpret these games, it's clear that both of them are engaging and thrilling
despite not being as large or as detailed as other games that evoke similar feelings and ideas.
It may seem strange that games as small as these could have such a large impact,
but it's a testament to how minimalism can work in video games.
Playdead purposefully uses specific techniques that create rich moods and atmospheres,
striking fear and dread into the hearts of the players on the same level as horror games
that have more grandeur and spectacle.
Combine that with a narrative that plants enough seeds to get you interested
but leaves most of it up to your imagination and it's easy to see
why so many players have fallen in love with these games, myself included.
They may seem unassuming on the surface with their simple gameplay and understated art styles,
but they invite you to dig deep and find their hidden layers,
which reveal two beautifully dark and terrifying experiences.
It's rare to see a studio produce two titles with this level of quality,
and it's made Playdead fans excited to see what they're coming up with next.
Playdead teased images for a new project which they describe as a third-person science fiction game,
but it's safe to assume that they're waiting to get the game in a polished state before showing any gameplay.
Unfortunately, Dino Patti has since moved on from Playdead
after a falling out with Arnt Jensen and miscommunications
leading to his ultimate resignation from and sale of his ownership of the company.
Patti moved on to co-found Jumpship, which is working on its game Somerville
which, judging by the trailers, seems to be following in similar footsteps to Limbo and Inside.
It'll be interesting to see what Playdead's new game and Somerville
will bring to the table, because Limbo and Inside have proven
how effective minimalist design can be for creating a deep, complex game.
They've influenced several titles since they came out and continue to be two
of the most celebrated indie games of all time, and while they may be short,
the impact they create in the player's hearts and minds will last forever.
