Additionally, there are options on the pause menu to restart from your last checkpoint or to start the level from the beginning. There are many checkpoints throughout each level, so if you have to quit the game or get stuck somehow, you can continue from the main menu and be back to a relatively recent spot in your playthrough. As you complete levels, you can revisit them later through the Select Level menu on the game’s title screen. The game is divided into several levels, each with a general theme or setting. Players will be subject to changing size themselves as well. It is an interesting gameplay mechanic, and makes the game’s puzzles a pleasure to figure out and solve. In Superliminal, that concept is central to how you’re able to take small objects and make them larger, or vice versa. The people are far away, but to our eyes, they look like tiny people we could grab, due to our fingers being close to our face and appearing much larger than the people. An instance of this concept can be seen in the popular child activity of holding two fingers in front of your eyes and “squashing” people you see with your fingers. It all comes down to a forced perspective. It’s a concept that is difficult to explain, but is very simple to understand while playing. Is the can small and close to you, or large and across the room? The answer is yes. Once dropped, the object takes on the size as it appears to the player, and the small block has now been made large enough to jump onto and a path to the doorway has been made. The player must take a small block and hold it in such a way that it looks large in the room. For example, say the door to the next room is set high up into a wall. Players move from room to room, picking up objects and changing their view to make the object appear larger or smaller to fit their needs based on the puzzle. The story keeps players guessing and leads them down an increasingly vexing and engaging journey through dreams. Just like the puzzles you solve, all is both as it seems and also not. What’s great about this game though is that it takes those concepts and puts its own spin on them. There have been games like Portal that have touched on the concept of players going “off the grid” and not adhering to the therapy or exercise set out for them, all the while badgered by an antagonistic AI. Much of the story of Superliminal seems fairly familiar.

Things seem a bit off as the game progresses. The AI starts to allude to the character not taking well to the treatment, the head of the institute starts to contact them about not being where they’re supposed to be, and peculiarities arise with each level passed, all leading to a conclusion that will leave players with much to think about.

Though the protagonist breezes through the ensuing puzzles, it becomes clearer after each room that perhaps this therapy is not going as smoothly as they’d like. It informs them that they are in fact in a dream, and therapy will consist of solving the puzzles in front of them. The protagonist starts to hear frequent comments broadcast over the PA system from the Standard Orientation Protocol, a computer AI tasked with orienting the subjects taking part in the SomnaSculpt program. The main character’s only path forward is through the hallways in front of them. The individual has apparently started therapy. The player awakens in a plain room containing only a desk, a ‘terms of service’ contract and pen laying atop it. Superliminal opens with the unnamed protagonist falling asleep watching a commercial about a new type of dream therapy called SomnaSculpt, pioneered by Dr. These wild quirks of perception are explored in Superliminal, a game where the player’s perspective plays a key role in the qualities of the objects and environment around them. Pictures appear to move by arranging lines in a certain pattern, and dresses can simultaneously appear black and blue to some, while others see the same dress as gold and white. It’s due to our reliance on perception that optical illusions have such a strange effect on our senses. For example, if something looks green, we can conclude that it is in fact green. How humans see the world boils down to how they perceive it.

Superliminal star room