The Development of Indie Game LIMBO

Have you played LIMBO before? This indie game changed the games industry in many ways when it was first released and is one of the most prolific indie success stories in the digital age of video games. Its development wasn’t a smooth journey, starting from the mind of a single designer before undergoing a long journey to completion.

How LIMBO Was Made and Why The Creator Regrets Its Development

Watch through this documentary carefully and answer the following questions.

  1. What were the childhood hobbies and interests of Arnt Jensen that would influence his game ideas later in life?

Playing on his parents farm, Exploring the forest, and a keen interest at small critters and insects


  1. What led Arnt to developing the idea of LIMBO initially? When did he first start developing the idea? What was the explanation he used to describe the idea?

Due to his dissatisfaction with his job at IO interactive. He started making LIMBO, as his solo passion project, a place

  1. What genre of game was initially considered for LIMBO before it became a puzzle platformer?

A point and click adventure game

  1. Why was the name LIMBO chosen for the game?

Limbus, the latin word that influenced Arnt as it meant “edge” or “boundry”, closely associated with hell.

  1. After working on the concept solo for over a year, how did Arnt attract other developers to join his team? What was the result?

With the making of a small cinematic trailer, it went viral as this unique monochromatic indie project, attracting many publishers and people that want to collaborate with it. Arnt was scared that people would take away his “passion project” and make it more commercialised.

  1. What were the two key criteria for deciding the game engine LIMBO would be built on?

Empowering Creativity

Allow for rapid Iteration

  1. Before it came out in 2010, what were the different sources of money that helped fund the game’s development?

Grants from the Danish Government

Arnt’s and Dino’s own pocket money

  1. Why was 70% of the game’s content stripped out at one point?

If two puzzle mechanics looked vastly different, but had the same or similar enough underlying solution strategy, then the better one would be picked.

It had to be constantly unique, and fresh for the player, if something seemed monotonous, it would be stripped out.

  1. As the game was developed and iterated on, which different game concepts were experimented with? Why were so many ideas experimented with?

The game was iterated with multiplayer, co-op and other game elements.

An inventory system was thrown out.

  1. Why was communicating to players considered a big challenge for the team? What was the process for designing effective puzzles?

Lessen the amount of physics based puzzles. As realistic physics might require the player to do 100 tries to get the correct outcome intended by the devs.

  1. What did the team learn from the playtesting, or ‘tissue-testing’, of LIMBO? How many different testers did they have for the game in total?

Tissue Testing being that they would observe a player playing the game for the first time without any guidance, the less they know, the better. 150 separate testers.

If say, multiple new people kept failing the same puzzle, back to the drawing board or scraping it all together. And if it was solved in the incorrect solution, they would get attached to the idea that they need to solve future puzzles in the similar or same manner.

As there were no tutorials, no explanatory text, and needed to learn by experimentation. Keeping puzzles and environments simple was always needed. So learning by dying became the method for which players would learn, as if they jump off a cliff and die, they would learn to not do that.

  1. Why did a publishing deal for the game with Sony not work out?


  1. What were the terms of the deal that the developers took with Microsoft? What did they gain from the deal and what did they have to give up?

  1. How many copies had the game sold by the end of 2011? How many awards did it win?

  1. Based on the gameplay, what do you think is the most interesting part of the design of LIMBO? What three words would you use to describe the game? Is there any part of this game’s development journey that might influence the development of your current game project?