How LIMBO Was Made and Why it's a Big Wound for The Creator
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- Опубліковано 16 тра 2024
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This LIMBO documentary details the development of indie 2D puzzle platformer LIMBO and goes behind the scenes of its creation. Discover more about developer PLAYDEAD and its two founders, Arnt Jensen and Dino Patti. For a time, Arnt was happy as a concept artist at IO Interactive, the team behind Hitman. However, as the job became more and more corporate, dissatisfaction started to set in. Meanwhile, Dino was going through a similar face at his game development job. He eventually resigned after problems like poor management and creative barriers became too prevalent and Dino even accepted he would never get the chance to work on his dream game. Not long after, Arnt made a cinematic concept trailer for a game idea he had. That idea would later expand into LIMBO. Once Dino saw the concept trailer, his passion for game development was reignited and he instantly knew he had to get involved with the project somehow.
The documentary also explores all the design decisions that PLAYDEAD made and shows how Arnt and Dino struggled to develop LIMBO by themselves. After obtaining grants from the Danish government and pouring all of their own money and time into LIMBO, they brought in more coders, increased middle management, and hired designers, allowing the pair to be at the center of everything. It also takes a close look at all the design hurdles the team had to go through. For a while, Arnt and Dino couldn’t find the right game engine for LIMBO. Luckily, Jeppe Carlsen applied for a programming job at the studio and he ended up building LIMBO’s engine from scratch. Additionally, Arnt wanted each puzzle to be based on a unique concept and to be as minimalistic as possible. This way of working took a lot of trial and error and led to 70% of the game's content being stripped out, vastly reducing its overall runtime. Furthermore, LIMBO also underwent numerous iterations because Arnt was adamant about taking the time to experiment with various concepts, such as multiplayer, co-op, and other prevalent video game elements. Lastly, the documentary examines why Arnt and Dino split up right after their next game INSIDE was released and what the future holds in store for them both.
0:00 Part 1
3:26 Ad
5:02 Part 2
References:
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Outro song: Thank You R.G.E. - Joe Bagale
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#LIMBO #PLAYDEAD #GameDevelopment - Ігри
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I love the Segway into the ad it's really funny
It would be great to see some older games that made impact: Turok, Lemmings, Hogs of war, Live for Speed, Street rod.
Can you do inside Next by Playdead the second game?
ironic you were talking about how commercialized games are bad then showed this...
"I was so scared they make it more commercialized... but first a word from our sponsors" is hilarious
Damn… I came down to the comments to type specifically this, lol.
That's hilarious. I completely missed that.
What's more hilarious is Sponsor Block completely skipping that garbage.
@@tails183 I wasn't aware of this. Thank you, that's pretty useful
Literally went here to write similiar comment. Glad people arent blind to irony
One of my favourite parts of your channel is how you add the theming of the games to your videos.
I always have a ton of fun doing that :D
@@ThatGuyGlenI too like that. ❤🙂 [DiowE]
@@ThatGuyGlenonly a small suggestion as feedback, can you please speak a bit more rapidly, as currently, it seems like you speak with very slow speed. 🐌
Had to watch every video of yours at 2X & would even watch at 3x if the option were available on app.
Just a suggestion from my side. Huge Respect to you & your hardwork. 💐 [DiowE]
@@DiowEme three
Totally!
Sadly, Playdead has never really done much since outside of Limbo and Inside. The game they've been working on has been in quite a spiral. And there's been a lot of controversy and drama behind the scenes. I wish them the best but I don't know if it will get better for them considering all that's happened so far.
@@Sinistar1983 : Uh, what? COCOON isn't by Playdead... it is by Geometric Interactive.
They take forever to release games because they don't like to make compromises and will not settle for second best. EPIC is funding their next game and will also handle all publishing so that's one less thing for Arnt and his team to worry about.
I do wish they were a bit more open on social media with how the new game is coming along, but I guess that's also part of the mystery that sets them apart from all other studios.
COCOON is by a developer behind these games, and even though it's different in various ways, it scratches the same itch.
@@nofuturo : You always have to make compromises somewhere. There is never a perfect game or piece of art that couldn't be improved more by more playtesting and development. It is just when do you call it and draw the line.
@@StefanLopuszanski These guys take no shortcuts is all I was trying to say. Even the most subtle animation cycle in a game like INSIDE required hundreds of iterations which sadly go unnoticed by 90% of players, but they're ok with that.
There's creatives who can crank out great work in relatively short periods of time and others who like to take their sweet time with their projects.
You really picked your spot for that game add, right after "I was so scared that people would [...] make it more commercialized." 😂
Still imo, the most atmospheric game ever made.
and one of the best by that!
Bioshock is imo also the most atmospheric game ever made
Inside is better
Rain world: Engage the stupid beach, motherhecker.
@@alexanderthegreat-mx5zu
HELL YEAH
Thank you for the documentary. I had forgotten about this game and have added it to my wishlist to enjoy later. One brief tip, coming from a software developer’s perspective: when mentioning the tools used to create a a game or any software, focus on the frameworks, the engine, and programming languages used. Which IDEs or text editors they used isn’t as relevant, although it’s still nice to know. Again, thank you for the video!
My pleasure!
I heard VB and I was happy.
edit: and then he named Visual Studio which would encompass everything you mentioned. Given the era he likely used xna for physics.
Seconding this. Just hit the point where "Using Visual Studio" was mentioned, and it threw me off because Visual Studio is the coding environment and less useful to know than what languages / frameworks were used.
Tho, to be fair, the Gamasutra article that info is sourced from literally only said that. Other than that it was a custom engine and was made Very specifically for Limbo (thus didn't translate into future projects), it doesn't seem like anything is widely known about the tech behind Limbo. So if one doesn't know about development, it would be very easy to copy that mistake.
Always a good day when Glen uploads.
Always a good day when Lutramere comments!
@@ThatGuyGlen wholesome
This is a great channel, you’ve covered almost all of the best indie games 👍
Thank you, glad to hear you like the channel! And there’s still many great indie games left to cover :D
Very interesting breakdown of the dev history. The smartest and riskiest decision they made was to stick to their guns regarding keeping full IP rights/control. As soon as you enable any potential disruption to a design journey, you're essentially inviting lots of conflict. Ballsy move but it paid off beautifully ☺️👍 Thanks for your video!
My pleasure, glad to hear you liked it!
this game brought a new perspective that i never knew it existed. Amazing video as always Glen!
Thanks, Faizal!
Jeppe Carlsen is a nice guy. His own games are also marvelous. COCOON released this year is a smash!
Played through Cocoon a few weeks ago. Brilliantly designed puzzle game.
A nice recap of the game's development, good editing quality, and some insight's into LIMBO's struggles.
Thank you very much for the kind words!
@22:24 the biggest problem I have with most any corporation is explained - their insane use of marketing and the fact they keep using it tells me more about my fellow man that I care to know.
Usually, when you create something from the heart, most other hearts more easily connect to it. So, always try to make things from the heart and you'll recieve whatever you need to make it grow.
Easily my favorite indie game.
Aside Limbo the structure of your videos and editing is 10/10, interesting info about the making of unique games in a positive tone.
Thank you very much for the kind words!
What indie game would you like to see me cover next? Leave a suggestion in the comments below! Also, if you enjoyed the video, please consider subscribing to stay up to date on future “How Games Were Made” episodes. Leaving a like and sharing the video also helps out! Support me on Patreon and get exclusive content like Q&As, ad-free content, access to my Discord server and more: www.patreon.com/ThatGuyGlen
Signalis!!! That would be amazing
Maybe "This War of Mine"?
Slay the spire
Lethal Company or It Steals
Mineko's Night Market!
finally, a video documenting the history and development of Limbo
Still waiting for the "Regrets" part. This comes to me as a successful project with its ups and downs.
It's a clickbait title.
Hilarious timing on the sponsor, great work!
I love these videos, mainly because it not only shows how the game was made but also how the dev's came about making it and kinda what they were doing during the time.
Oh and you mainly talk about indie games, tis cool!
Much appreciated! Yup, indie games are my bread and butter :D
"jumpship" it's such a perfect name for a splinter studio
A fascinating story. Limbo is a brilliant game, though it lost me some way into the “factory” section. The game hooked me with its emotional puzzles - but in the factory section the puzzles became purely mechanical, abstract and tedious. Still a masterpiece, though.
It can’t be a masterpiece if it lost its way during the tedious factory section. It’s very good but nowhere near a masterpiece
"i only liked the first half 10/10 masterpiece"
Funny how i own all playdeads games and also jumpship and GI recent cocoon game. Playdead was definitly a place where incredible people emerged
i think i missed a part or something, where does it says why the creator regrets the development of limbo???
He never says that its called clickbait nerd
He's quoting how he said it was a big wound for the creator that he was less involved in the making of the second half of the game
I have some connection to Limbo...that spider gave me nightmares. Great grim work simplified and concentrated in the true meaning of INDIE.
I hope you've played INSIDE and COCOON by this point.
If not, Inside gets discounted all the time, and Cocoon just came out (it's by a developer of Limbo, but it's very different).
@thattaht I haven't played inside...heard such good things about it, though. I had already added cocoon to my wishlist! I will certainly move it up my list.
I am kind of an achievement completionist/OST Vinyl archiver, so games are hard to come by since I need to complete a set of 6 games, my last purchases were Salt and Santuary and FAR rising tides...I really regret not adding cocoon...but I am sure I will be able to purchase it in the spring sale next year.
One of the first games i bought on steam and still one of my best experiences in gaming to this day!
Always a pleasure learning about the development stories for these indie games, especially when it's a debut title from that studio.
Still waiting for the day for you to make a video on Hyper Light Drifter.
Limbo is an awesome experience and I love the philosophy they followed to create it
I remember having to play Limbo at school in a science class years ago. To this day I still don't know why but it was great
What a great video. Always wanted to know how my childhood game came to be. Will never forget how important Limbo was to changing the way I appreciate games as more than just a game.
Thanks, glad to hear you liked it!
Regardless of what the creator thinks of Limbo, it’s still a masterpiece.
Placing the sponsorship right after stating Jensens fear of getting commercialized is kinda funny
Yo Glen I think you should talk about darkwood. Would make for a great video, although sadly the devs disbanded recently too.
they were even selling their table that can be seen in the indiegogo content of the game (their whole studio can be seen ingame if enabling indiegogo content)
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look into it!
very interesting to hear about how the guy generated interest initially, ive hoped something like that could help me meet people of a like mind to work on a project together
Excellent work, as always. Congratz!
Much appreciated, glad you liked it!
0:00 Part 1
3:26 Star Trek: Fleet Command ad
5:02 Part 2
Fantastic video as always! I’d really love to see you do a documentary on Braid one day :D
Thank you, glad to hear you liked it! Braid is on my list ;)
Really insightful video. I played the game last year - it’s amazing!
One thing: your site for the references does not show the references. There’s a list of contents in the article, bit there’s no references at the end. I wanted to read more about Arnt’s case at the Danish court.
Ive had a ...rough life and lost EVERYTHING too many times to count, ive only had a phone for 2 years, and recently my neighbour learnt this, he gave me his old xbox360 and 15games, i was looking for a game my god daughter to play, and saw this one, i was intrigued, and now im convinced, i MUST get it..thankyou! 💖
Hope things are looking up for you nowadays and enjoy playing Limbo!
Another great video 👍
Hope your thanksgiving was good Glen
Thank you! And we don’t actually celebrate thanksgiving where I’m from :P Hope yours was awesome though!
@@ThatGuyGlenoh alright
Hope your week was good then
The whole sound and music section was brilliant, I love how in depth you went with it.
Glad to hear you liked it!
@@ThatGuyGlen U never miss
I remember the dev shared this Limbo to my gymnasium for the game graphics program for free as a part of the education where we studies and analyzed its game design as we played the game and made our own levels in photoshop that we also got for free! We also did the same for a shareware old school sci fi Doom-clone that I forgot the name at the moment. It was so much fun although I was never good at that Doom-clone. I graduated last year from gymnasium.
I really like the atmosphere of Limbo, it always reminded me alot of Thomas Was Alone. (It'd be cool if you could do it next :D)
Thomas Was Alone is on my list! ;)
@@ThatGuyGlen Hahaha awesome :D
I don't agree with the thought, that this game can only be played once. I tried playing this game a couple of times already but I always found it too depressing. This year however, I managed to start it again and finish it as well. I found it really good and I will definitely play it again in the future. ❤
hats off to you sir for properly stating your sources it makes me really appretiate your video
Thank you for another great video!
My pleasure, glad you liked it!
i've been on the lookout for the next Playdead title announcement at every gaming conference and it never seems to happen, i'll be so stoked when it does get revealed.
I loved both games, Limbo and Inside, they were a pleasant breath of fresh air.
Great video! This is the first of yours I've watched, but you already got a sub from me :) Keep up the awesome work!
Awesome, thank you very much for subscribing! And will do!
My brother and I played this game when it first came out. I enjoyed playing this game. To this day it is one of my favorite. I would pay good money to get a part 2...
Fantastic video! And can I just say, as a Dane, I so so appreciate you taking the time to research how to pronounce the names correctly, it means more than you know
When you talk about an INSTANTLY recognizable art style in a video game, Limbo has to be in the top 10 of all-time - absolutely love it!
Great video as usual. Loved limbo
Thanks, glad you liked it!
hey , many thanks for this detailed video , it was an game dev course by itself!
as a solo game dev i really enjoy seeing this type of content.
My pleasure, glad to hear you liked it!
Discovering this game was a great experience. It is a unique game, and you described well how and why !
Much appreciated!
I've not played Limbo... but I played Inside, which came later. Many of the concept sketches are extremely evocative of parts of Inside. I played Inside because I had originally come across a technical talk from a game development conference about the lighting and how it was developed for Inside. The extreme degree of care that was taken and thought put into it let me know that Inside was something special and not just the same mind-numbing garbage churned out by large corporate publishers. I bought Inside before it launched on that certainty, and when it released, I played it entirely through in a single sitting. I was not, at any moment, disappointed. And holy hell, the deaths in that game? I never wanted to screw up... each death was visceral and regretted. Every moment of that game is a masterwork.
It's hilarious how butthurt mainstream industry chuds get when a project exuding creativity and passion from every pore is successful. Those at the head of large companies enjoy too much their little torture dungeons they've created in their workplace, riling in sadistic glee the pain they exact by exploiting not only the artists and developers who dreamed of working in games since they were children, but also exploiting the spineless weasels of the gaming audience who simply can not stand up for themselves or bring themselves to simply not shovel mountains of cash into the pockets of whichever gaming company treats them the worst. (Seriously, the number of games with the largest number of "boycotts" and the best-selling games are exactly the same list. Decades in and the gamers still haven't figured out that CEOs don't care about Internet comments if you still play the game.)
I just watched two videos on this channel (this and one other) and I'm greatly enjoying the content... I think I'll hang around for a bit. 😸😻👍
Great video as per usual. Was looking forward to a video on Playdead. Please keep it going by covering Inside as well, that would be amazing!
Glad to hear you liked it! I might cover Inside one day as well, but I already have the next couple of videos lined up :D
@@ThatGuyGlen Well, I'll be looking forward to it
It was a pure work of art. All the bs never made it to me and I was able to share this with people that would never otherwise play games.
Thank you for the video, it was really interesting! Have a good day!
Thank you very much, you have a good day too!
3:27 that's such a perfect place for an ad
I play limbo late ,I finished three week ago or a month, the creative of the game is amazing
when I was a kid I didn't pay any attention to indie games OR horror games of any kind, that is till I played Limbo when I first came out and that changed everything for me. Now indie games and horror games take a huge part of my attention.
I bough this game on 3 different platform and have probably 4 full playtrough to this day, what a small little gem
the storytelling pace of ur video is incredible🥰
Thank you!
Oh limbo that one’s a classic
Please cover Phasmophobia or Lethal Company. I’d love to learn more about both devs.
I'll look into those, thanks for the suggestions!
This is a great video Thank you.
I was trying to find the GDC talk which was shown sometimes. Do you have a link? I can't find it.
My pleasure, glad you liked it! And here's the link: www.gdcvault.com/play/1013665/Limbo-Balancing-Fun-and-Frustration
Very good documentary! Limbo is one of my favorites!
I love the story!
Much appreciated, glad to hear you liked it!
"It would remain an exclusive for life on XBox 360"
Yeah, I don't know about that one
Man this game is my all time favorite and thank you Glen for making this video, would be looking forward to your future videos to see How Inside by Playdead was made.
My pleasure!
Visual studio is not a programming language, it's just a code editor, he can code in a notepad if he wanted
god your videos are so awesome I love the content man
Much appreciated!
still remember coming across this game randomly in a Humble Bundle back in the day -- one of the all time greats!
I've watch 3 of your contents and I love it all. Subscribed.
Thank you very much for subscribing!
Great informative video thanks, i loved Limbo and INSIDE bought them multiple times for different platforms absolute masterpieces
My pleasure, glad to hear you liked it!
Im so glad i played this game. I have such heartwarming memories of it. I'm just so glad it came to exist.
Interesting look into the development! It's the worst feeling when you get stuck on a puzzle and then find out that you already had the solution but you were just not executing right and then you move on.
The player model of Limbo is so perfect. All of the variants you showed just immediately look wrong haha.
If you’re interested, I would love a video about the making of Little Nightmares; it’s similair to Limbo, and has a new game in the series realeasing in the coming year.
I'd like to do one about Little Nightmares one day, love that series!
this beautiful piece of art is still one of my favorite games of all times.
Friendly hint of correction: The part where you talk about LIMBOs game engine selection is a bit confusing. Visual Studio is neither a game engine nor a programming language, but it's an IDE which can be used for various kinds of projects that occupy different languages. It would be really interesting to know what programming language was actually used.
Other than that I really like your videos!
Star Trek Fleet Command is the new Raid Shadow Legends
wooooooooah no way that is crazy you are going to team up with different indie titles so cool.
Love your videos!!!
Glad to hear you like them!
the title changed forced me to wonder if two limbo docs were posted today
Inside is the greatest game of all time. Graphics (amazing), Sound (amazing), Gameplay (amazing), Puzzles (very fun to solve).
This channel could be a Netflix exclusive.
Def not binge watching your channel 👀😂 It's so good!
Awesome to hear, glad you like the videos!
really good vid!!!
Much appreciated!
Limbo's lead level designer made cocoon??! 🤯
LIMBO is a pretty unique experience I truly enjoyed.
Would be awesome if youll cover one day Hyper Light Drifter, but of course you focus on games that you want
It’ll happen ;)
One of the first games I bought on steam :)
Incredible!🎉❤
Thank you!
wow man what a video!
made a break to have my dinner and watched it in the meanwhile. Thanks!
"He was scared of it being too commercialized"
Immediately cuts to commercial advertisement
Love your videos, could you please do one on Lethal Company?
Glad to hear you like them! And I'll look into that one.
As someone who started an indie studio, I hope one day you’ll make a video about one of our games.
Congrats on starting your own indie studio! That's already a huge milestone :D
@@ThatGuyGlen Thanks. I made a submission on your website, and hopefully we will be able to work something out.
Have you ever tried Machinarium?
i would love to hear about the development of the samorost trilogy
Haven't tried that one myself no.
I remember when I first played Limbo and my first thought was “hey I had this nightmare as a kid… this is horrible I love it”.
New thumbnail and title every time I see this video recommended. I guess for experimenting