WALKING THROUGH LIMBO'S GERMAN EXPRESSIONISTS

摘要

In Limbo, players control the shadowed outline of a young boy, who wades through the murk of an afterlife filled with soiled set pieces and bursts of balmy light, moving as if through a dream. The boy drifts from left to right on a side-scrolling map, while the screen flickers as if pulsating and writhing under the lamp of a projector. Meanwhile, the boy's white eyes burn in the dark. He trudges through the chiaroscuro game environment in search of his sister, while the use of light and shadows echo those of German Expressionistic films, such as Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). The sound of water drips somewhere in the distance, and behind the boy lies a complicated backdrop: a body hangs by a rope, frozen in time and massive trees loom behind a gauzy fog. The game could indeed be a film just by the look of it, and developers take advantage of these cinematic qualities to provide players greater emotional involvement.