I spent a couple hours tonight playing “Limbo”, which I’d gotten in one Humble Bundle or another. It’s a fabulously depressing game, where you’re a little boy in a grey silhouette world where pretty much everyone and everything wants to kill you. After a while it abandons all pretense of reasons for things to want to kill you and just sticks you in a giant deathtrap.
This is incredibly dire, and after a bit I really stopped sympathizing with the kid and started laughing. It started feeling like a videogame adaptation of Gorey’s “Ghaslycrumb Tinies”.
Especially after I got tired of its soundtrack of creepy atmospheric noises and started making iTunes play the HAPPIEST MUSIC I HAVE. New Pornographers! CAB CALLOWAY! Going through an immense deathtrap of spinning gears and buzzsaws felt a lot funnier when it was accompanied by bouncy jazz that I’d hear in a Betty Boop cartoon.
So that’s my evening, then.