LIMINAL WATERS - ENHANCED EDITION

I'm very on the fence about this game, and it's all due to the levels past the poolrooms. So take this recommend only for the first 6 or so levels. I found the poolrooms exploration thrilling. Genuinely maze-like, with cool, unsettling new rooms to find in each corner of the levels. It was really fun going around trying to find every secret for the achievements. I think the sound design does a lot of the heavy lifting for the unsettling atmosphere, but that is to be expected in a walking sim of this genre with no story telling. The UE5 environments looked great, the lighting as well was breathtaking at times. Now for the not so great elements, I really did not understand the shift to the more open, and not poolrooms levels. I'm not sure how Liminal [i] Waters [/i] ended up suddenly in the desert and in space. The spaces were very open, not liminal in the slightest, nor made you uneasy. The levels did not encourage going out of your ways to find new hidden rooms, as there weren't any. Another one of these levels introduce suddenly a puzzle mechanic, which you do not encounter for the entirety of the game and left me confused for quite a bit before I realised what I had to do. I find it a very odd choice to make that a thing for 5% of the game in one level, and have it never come back. These levels were a slog to get through, a lot of it required you to walk in a straight line for what felt like ages, all with not ability to auto- walk or toggle run at the very least. The last few levels feel some like some surreal experimental side project that should have been its own game, and did not feel like it belonged in this one at all. I respect the dev's choice of trying something new, but it did not deserve its place in this. I saw in the Steam discussions that the dev seems to be very responsive to feedback and was even helping people with achievement issues and questions, and that is something I can really appreciate. I still would have loved seeming some QOL changes, like a run toggle, the head bobbing and camera smoothing not resetting after level, a gamma and shadows slider.

With the new updates this the best liminal space game I have played. Good job dev.

I'm really of two minds about this game. It works, no bugs, from start to end. However it's got some frustrating design choices, and an egregious oversight. The design choices are relatively minor. The first few levels are labyrinthian, they're fine, though one of the levels has an annoying backtracking route. There's also a few references to other properties which feel misplaced, and the 'something is here' feeling is overdone and too on the nose. Given the complete lack of narrative otherwise, even that feels misplaced. The oversight is more serious. Poolrooms live and die by how believable and uncanny they look, but here, there's misaligned textures and meshes galore, and many rooms have far too much clutter which does not match the rooms they're in. It screams "this is a videogame' at every single turn. The most infuriating texture issue are some wood planks where the texture on the top and bottom runs slightly diagonally, and the sides are vertical. This makes the game feel very rushed, and, well, like 'a game'. If there's any feedback i want to give the developer, it's this: Go through the game, and align your textures. Make sure the edge on a texture aligns with the edge on a mesh. The wood planks are the most in your face problem, but it's also the stairs in all the poolrooms where the tile texture doesn't line up on any single step or wall. It's a finicky and annoying job but when you do this, the game will instantly feel 10 times better. I'd also remove some of the clutter and objects. A lot of rooms have too much going on (also some VERY noisy textures, like the triangle/square black/white tiled texture) to really pull you into the experience. The minimalist, uncanny realism of the poolrooms aesthetic always just seems like a step too far away. And source the lights! There's so many unsourced lights, especially in some long tunnels and drops, where a pointlight is added but no visible lightsource. The player also frequently walks through some badly placed pointlights, creating shadows which might seem intentional to freak them out but it feels very clunky. UE5 has a decent pbr and gi implementation which this version seems to use a plenty, so the remaining use of pointlights seems like an oversight, a remnant of the previous engine version which was never updated. --SPOILERS-- Most of the other levels also need some polish. Rock meshes are positioned in a way where their edges are very, very visible. The teleporter in the open desert level which teleports you a long way away makes you walk back all the way, past a LOT of holes in meshes and meshes with severe collision issues. The space level relies too much on the baked in collision of the rock meshes used, the walking paths could really use some smoothing out so you don't have to jump all the time just to move along an otherwise flat surface. This combined with the decluttering above may also smooth the game out fps wise a bit. I'd also remove some of the 'what was that' moments - The enderman was too silly, the teleporting shadows are too frequent, and hearing someone else actually talk was odd. But that's more personal. Adding a few more subtle hints at a narrative would also go a long way towards adding a more cohesive atmosphere, especially when the game switches away from the poolrooms. --SPOILERS The game just needs another layer of polish. After that, it could be great. Right now, it just feels a bit too messy to recommend.

[b]LIMINAL WATERS:[/b] Purchased for 8.25 AUD. Approx 2.8 hrs in length. Nothing chases you, this game is vibes, walking simulator. And thats okay~! It was alright, I enjoyed it, especially the 90's early CG vibes introduced Towards the end [spoiler] visiting other desert planets etc[/spoiler] I didn't enjoy the [spoiler] space section as much[/spoiler] it felt like the maps towards the end of the game, really padded things out and if you were to fall off somewhere towards the end of the level, you would have to redo the entire padded out walking sequence. which at that moment I was over it. so in summary started strong and continued to build. *after the demo remake levels it sort of lost its way. The [spoiler] space [/spoiler] levels need to be shorter or have respawn points not at the beginning of the level. Though the vibe was great. Would I play again, probably not. not much replayablity but fun and an achivement for one person to develop, well done. Overall its a liminal experimentation.

又夯又拉说是，美工氛围BGM给到夯，存档机制、指路标注、光污染给到拉完了，谁懂黑乎乎的地方影影绰绰结果手电筒一照发现又是个鸭子玩具的救赎感，手电筒给到人上人，NPC木头人太渗人手电筒都救不了给到NPC，本游戏中怪物和滚木合并同类项，总体来说，小众向核艺术氛围感步行模拟器，属于小范围享受的顶级艺术展，如果你喜欢核艺术和阈限空间艺术值得把玩把玩。如果你想玩逃离后室那就是拉完了，如果你想体验的是类似后室复体远征只能说NPC缺少那种录像带纪实片的质感。

One of the most common complaints about liminal style exploration games is that they can get a bit boring and samey after a while, but that isn't true for Liminal Waters. A lot of thought has been put in by the developer to give each stage and room a distinct visual style, meaning it remains interesting to explore throughout the game's runtime. Visually the game looks really good, and a lot of effort has been put in to make each environment pop visually, including some really interesting lighting choices. Performance is also decent. On my hardware at 1440P native, the lowest I saw was 53 FPS (and even at that framerate the game didn't stutter and frametimes remained excellent) and for most of the game's runtime it stays in the 80-100 range. The game is fairly light on the CPU so you can play it on a much weaker CPU than mine. Sound design is also great. There is a great mixture of creepy, eerie and atmospheric sound and the music used is subtle and blends into the levels well. The developer is also really receptive to player feedback and implements fixes and improvements quite quickly. If you're a fan of this style of game, Liminal Waters is well worth a play.

only pro is the level designs are nice areas that loop so you can see everything cons: only your foot steps and water makes sound running into objects make no sound you will be running alot many dead ends could be more spooky like you're being watched, this is pretty weak there are some easter eggs but also weak repeative ducks and statues

By far one of my favorite if liminal space backrooms style games! Every part of this game shows passion and detail, from the audio to the textures and physics. There is even some fun easter eggs and aspects to the game that open up an entirely new experience. I can't give props enough to this company for the continuous updates and community driven improvements as well as the humbleness that this dev and company give to their testers. Very well done, fan for life! Definitely worth the $$$