Superliminal

Lore & Background

Superliminal was developed by the six-member team of Pillow Castle, led by Albert Shih, a student from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Shih developed the foundation of the game around 2013 as part of a programming assignment, looking for 'what kind of interesting first person game can I build by just moving cubes around?' He improved the concept during graduate work, establishing Pillow Castle in January 2014 with assistance from four other ETC students. The game was inspired by successful small-team games like Risk of Rain and Antichamber, with Antichamber particularly influencing Shih's desire to encourage players to think outside the box. The game was first revealed as Museum of Simulation Technology as a tech demo, featured at the 2013 Tokyo Game Show's Sense of Wonder Night, where it won 'Best Technology' and 'Audience Award'. The tech demo was publicly released in January 2014 and won the Independent Games Festival Student Competition for 2014 alongside Risk of Rain and Engare. The demo generated high interest, with a Reddit post announcing it becoming the 4th highest post on /r/gaming as of 2015, drawing strong comparisons to Portal.

Reader's Guide

Superliminal's significance lies in its innovative use of forced perspective as a core puzzle mechanic, a concept Shih likened to common tourist photos of people appearing to push the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The scaling mechanic, achieved in Unity by tracking object size and distance relative to the player's viewpoint, was straightforward to implement, though accounting for complex object shapes and player expectations proved challenging. The game's puzzles were designed to create moments of epiphany for the player, similar to Portal's portal-based puzzles. Playtesting revealed issues with players finding non-working solutions, leading the developers to replace jumping with a mantling system to better guide players. The game's legacy includes its release as an Epic Games Store timed exclusive, later coming to Steam in November 2020 with developer commentary and a challenge mode. A free update in November 2021 added a time-limited experimental multiplayer mode called 'Group Therapy' to the Windows version.

Did You Know?

• The game was originally revealed as Museum of Simulation Technology.
• The core scaling mechanic was inspired by tourist photos of people using forced perspective with the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
• Console ports were developed by PlayEveryWare.