GAMES · STORY NOTES

Superliminal

Superliminal is a 2019 surreal puzzle video game released by Pillow Castle Games. The game, played from a first-person perspective, incorporates gameplay elements around optical illusions and forced perspective; notably, certain objects when picked up can be moved towards or away from the player, but when placed back down, scale to the size as the player had viewed them, enabling the player to solve otherwise impossible puzzles to complete the game.

Description adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Superliminal · CC BY-SA 4.0. Text adapted for this entry.

FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

The story, including the ending.

These write-ups discuss major events and outcomes for this listed work. Each source and its coverage are identified below.

Source plot synopsis — includes the ending

The player heads to the Pierce Institute to get some therapy from its new SomnaSculpt technology which is designed to provide dream therapy to patients. They are put to sleep and placed in a testing environment constructed in their dreamworld, where they are capable of performing reality bending feats such as changing the size of items based on perspective or instantly creating copies of them. However, the player fails to wake up at their appointed time, ending up back inside the dreamworld. A Pierce Institute doctor, Dr. Glenn Pierce, communicates to the player through radios, explaining that they have completely lost track of the player, and that the player is likely traveling through successive dream layers. Meanwhile, the AI administering the dream therapy advises the player to initiate an "Explosive Mental Overload" in order to trigger the "Emergency Exit Protocol" and escape the dreamworld.
Eventually, the player travels through enough dream layers to trigger the Emergency Exit Protocol, but it fails due to an unknown error. The AI concludes that SomnaSculpt therapy failed to eliminate the player's negative emotions; hence they cannot leave the dreamworld. The AI then advises the player to find their own way out. With the player now trapped, the dreamworld becomes increasingly surreal. Eventually, the player creates a dream paradox and ends up in the realm of Whitespace where all sense of reality is lost.
The player is eventually able to navigate their way out of Whitespace, and Dr. Pierce congratulates them, revealing that the entire journey occurred just as planned, as it was a way to make the player see things from every different perspective, which will help them grow as a person. Dr. Pierce also advises that even though the therapy occurred in the dreamworld, everything the player learned is as real as they want it to be. The player then returns to the room they began in, where Dr. Pierce tells them to wake up.
Sources and content license

Source and revision history ↗ · Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Superliminal. Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license