The Noir Beauty Of Limbo

Xbox Live Arcade has seen several memorable indie games in the past few years with the likes of Braid and Castle Crashers. In 2010 one of the stand-outs was undoubtedly Limbo, developed by a small Danish team in Playdead.

Limbo is a fairly short and simple puzzle platformer with a simply gorgeous graphical style. You take the role of a young boy who inexplicably wakes in a forest. There is no opening cinematic or dialogue to explain the situation – it just is. The basic gameplay consists of running to the right and desperately trying not to die as a plethora of nasty environmental traps and insidious hazards attempt to lead you to a grizzly demise. Circular saw blades, spike pits and giant creepy spiders are all par for course in Limbo. It can be an unforgiving game at times because of its sometimes obscure puzzles and its frustrating checkpoint system – but this does not mar the experience one bit.

The use of vignetting, darkness and film grain all go a very long way to setting an oppressive tone; a tone that Limbo sticks to throughout without remorse. The extreme darkness also means that the sound design in the game is nothing short of fantastic. Listening for sound cues as you attempt to overcome puzzles is done with a level of subtlety rarely seen in games. Even with a complete lack of voice-over or any text throughout the experience, Limbo is a deeply haunting game that I found myself thinking about weeks after I had finished it.

Limbo's Dark Terrain

After no doubt meeting a horrible end a vast number of times, you’ll probably reach the end of Limbo in around 5 or 6 hours which isn’t a huge length of time considering the 1200 Microsoft points you’ll have to lay down (roughly £10) — which some might consider a bit steep — but make no mistake. This is a game which is as short as it is beautiful, and yet it somehow manages to transcend the trappings of its various components in such a poignant way that I was left pondering life itself after reaching the conclusion. This is a game that should be experienced by everyone – if at least once.

It was the most wonderful time of the year when even the dark of heart spread festive cheer. Every time the Christmas season rolls around there are a few things I look forward to and one of these is receiving a Christmas card from Circus Of Horrors crew.

Touring their brand new Day Of The Dead Mexicano show the troupe of terrors have only just left the north at the close of the 2009 leg of the tour having just enough time to pop in and open a new branch of popular alternative clothing store Enter The Asylum in Middlesbrough along the way.

Doctor Haze Enters The Asylum: The horrid ringmaster opens an alternative clothing store.

While the card is essentially an announcement of dates to come, Its always fun to recieve these alternative cards, bellowing a hearty “Ho bloody HO!” of christmas greetings.
The card lists a whole slew of dates for early 2010 with dates including Darlington, York and Sheffield.

Next years show continues the performances of the Day Of The Dead Mexicano with the circus taking a jaunt to Mexico to revive the recently deceased ringmaster with some ancient juju. Needless to say, things go awry with plenty of opportunities for the Circus of Horrors to astound and disgust with their usual mix of contortion and pain with an added dash of Lucha Libre.

A list of upcoming dates are available on our gigs page.
Tickets are available through a variety of boxoffices and vary venue to venue.