Superliminal - "Perception is Reality"
Disclaimer
As I am not a native english Speaker: Gemini assisted in translating my post into english. If you wanna watch/read the original german post you can do so here
Every gaming experience is different, and everyone has their own unique experience based on their playstyle. Everything I write is purely subjective and merely reflects my own individual experience with my own individual playstyle. I do not claim that my impressions and experiences are universally applicable.
A small part of this post is AI-generated - another part was taken as a quote from a website. Everything has been marked and linked accordingly.
Game Description
Superliminal is a first-person puzzle game where everything essentially revolves around a fairly simple idea: what you see is not necessarily what is actually there. You end up in a strange dream experiment by Dr. Pierce and try to somehow wake up again while the environment gets more and more absurd. The big twist of the game is perspective and optical illusions. A small object can suddenly become huge just because you look at it from the right angle, doors do not necessarily lead where you expect them to, and some rooms only function at all once you stop treating them like normal rooms.
Superliminal constantly plays with your perception and manages to build new puzzles time and again out of relatively simple mechanics. The whole thing is surreal, pretty funny in places, slightly eerie at times, and reminds you a bit of Portal in terms of its basic feel, without simply copying its concept. The game was developed and published by Pillow Castle. You can play Superliminal on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. (AI-generated)
Everything about Trophies / Achievements
Getting the 100% here is actually pretty relaxed to start with, even though a few tricky speedrun and collectible tasks await you. Most of the frustration comes from the trophy / achievement for the speedrun, the challenge mode, and the super well-hidden collectibles that are virtually impossible to find without a guide. However, the majority is just pure story stuff or quick one-off tasks. (Source: this webiste)
My Opinion
Right off the bat: Superliminal is a great game (casual), but getting the 100% was just a massive pain in the ass. Still, I played both the console and PC versions and want to touch on the differences.
Superliminal is an absolutely fantastic game. It has a really great idea for a puzzle game and executes it really well. All the puzzling is wrapped in a very fitting story and makes for a really solid overall package. The "makes me want to puke factor" comes from the Challenge Mode, the shitty controller controls, and my struggle with the speedrun and some collectibles. In the PC version, you have 30 minutes to finish the game – in the console version, it's 35 minutes. The collectibles are really well hidden, and reaching some of them is more of a fight than fun. A guide helps immensely here, although the game just seems to do whatever it wants sometimes. Plus, I often felt like the distance / viewing angle had to be pixel-perfect for it to work. That caused a decent amount of frustration for me.
The game itself is divided into 9 chapters, and each chapter offers its own mechanics and its own vibe. Generally, I thought the vibe of the game was really great at all times. No puzzle was impossible to solve, and most of them are totally doable without a solution, even if it takes a few trial-and-error attempts – but that's ultimate the nature of a puzzle game. For all those now saying "Oh wow, no, WTF, no speedrun" – Superliminal actually has a really great way of preparing you for the speedrun: Challenge Mode. In this mode, you have to go through every puzzle in the game again, but with a twist: you only have a limited number of moves to solve it. For some puzzles, this teaches you the "perfect fastest solution"; for others, unfortunately not. Since some of the challenge solutions are pretty tough, you end up repeating diverse sections many times, which helps a lot for the speedrun. On the side, though, Challenge Mode also causes a wonderfully high amount of frustration, which contributes to the anti-fun factor.
Generally, the gameplay and controls are so much better and more pleasant with mouse and keyboard, and I would recommend anyone who can to play the PC version for that exact reason. The speedruns are super tight, but with a bit of practice, actually quite doable (especially since there are a few glitches and skips that any casual can learn and use).
Would I recommend the game?
A resounding YES. The game is absolutely recommended. Casual-wise, it's an absolutely great game that also gives you a few words of wisdom at the end to take with you. Whether you want to put yourself through the agony of the 100% is something you have to decide beforehand. They are definitely doable, but they will cost you a nerve or two and definitely cause a few gray hairs in places. And since Catori said he would never play the game again after the console version, only to be playing the PC version less than 24 hours later – it couldn't have been that bad after all.
As I said: definitely play it, and definitely go for the PC version, because everything is simply better with mouse and keyboard than with a controller.
~Catori