Take a deep breath, everything will be fine. Well, not too much either: here, at the small railway border post located at the top of Mont Blanc (or Mount Fuji, or Mount Denali, or whatever other highest peak in the country you chose at the beginning of the game), oxygen It is a rare commodity. In a short time, Limita game from French developer Julien Eveillé, available for PC on Tuesday, November 19, immerses you in an atmosphere that will cut with a knife.
Mo, his colleague whom he has come to relieve from his “shift,” explains the ins and outs: a train of infinite length passes through this border post without stopping, without a locomotive or a red lantern. If it slows down, it’s up to you to give it a good whistle to get it back to cruising speed. This is the sine qua non condition for a vending machine (remember, air is a luxury here) to dispense cans of oxygen.
That’s all: the work seems mind-numbing, but it has the merit of being simple. Then you must ask the questions yourself. Why, in this already suffocating world, is breathing your main work tool? Why does this train seem endless? Carrying? What is behind this immense wall that marks the border? What the hell are you doing at the top of Mont Blanc and what happened to the person who was there before you? At the border post the answers are as scarce as the air we breathe.
train-train
The narrow world of Limit It’s cloudy and not very detailed. The aesthetic immediately evokes that of the first PlayStation, its pixelated textures, its large volumes and its unstable geometry. What the raw graphics do not reveal is complemented by our brain made paranoid by this suffocating atmosphere. The colors also seem to have left this universe: everything is brown, yellow and brown. Players accustomed to the paddle of a Papers please (2016), which address the same laborious and patriotic themes, will not be out of place.
The absurdity of the task, the repetition of which is remembered when a shrill alarm sounds, also evokes what the survivors of Lost (2004 to 2010), forced to periodically press a button with unknown repercussions. And we must not tell, to shed light on its hierarchy: evasive, it only answers its questions through a disembodied and inhuman voice, which resonates in an empty room reminiscent of the board of directors of Control (2019).
While we scream and our character seeks to emancipate himself from this world where workers are suffocated to better reward them with air, it is difficult not to think about the health situation at the heart of the Covid years. The mention in the introduction “based on an authentic story” and a clarification of the year “2021” maintains the possible parallel in any case. You don’t have to go very far (the game lasts 1 hour and 30 minutes anyway) to understand that this train that seems to go faster and faster and that becomes more and more uncontrollable, is a clear parable of the mandate to economic productivity. At least we can recognize in the morbid universe of Limit a virtue compared to ours: that of letting us control, even a little, the speed of the convoy.
The opinion of pixels
We liked:
- The solid coherence of this colorless world;
- Symbolism: strong, provocative, effective;
- The collected aspect of the experience.
We liked less:
- To see the different conclusions, you have to restart the game so many times;
It’s more for you if:
- Are you the type that thinks that Papers please It is a relaxing game.
It is not for you if:
- You think that a stay in the mountains is above all about breathing fresh air.
Pixel Note:
4,805.59 meters
