Some games try to scare you with monsters. Others, like Liminal Exit, rattle you with everything else: flickering lights, looping hallways, and barely-there anomalies that twist your brain sideways. Inspired by Exit 8, the Backrooms, and Observation Duty, Liminal Exit from indie dev LittleRedDread is a short but extremely effective atmospheric horror-puzzle game that thrives in subtlety. It’s simple, clever, and immersive—and it’ll have you questioning your memory with every step.
Escape Is an Illusion
The premise is familiar to fans of liminal horror: you’re trapped in a building that doesn’t follow the rules of space or time. You thought it was just an elevator ride or a hallway walk, but now reality loops. And shifts. And watches you back.
Your only means of escape? The elevator. But not just any elevator ride—one that tests your perception and ability to spot what’s out of place. Your job is to ride through three unsettling floors and identify environmental anomalies. Miss too many, or get too comfortable, and you may find yourself stuck. Or worse.
Anomaly Hunting with Stakes
At its core, Liminal Exit is a first-person “spot the difference” game with a heavy horror tone. You walk through eerily quiet corridors, observe your surroundings, then step into the elevator and answer: “Was anything wrong with that floor?”
The anomalies range from hilariously obvious (a chair floating) to brain-bendingly subtle (a missing poster, a slightly skewed vent). There’s no UI clutter, no big tutorial dumps. Just you, the walls, and the creeping realization that something is off.
You can play on Normal or Hardcore mode. On Normal, you get checkpoints. On Hardcore, one mistake resets you to the beginning. It sounds brutal, but the game balances fairness with challenge well. Most of the difficulty comes from testing your memory and attention to detail, not from cheap tricks.
Liminal Perfection
Where Liminal Exit shines is in its vibe. It nails the uncanny feeling of liminal spaces—those transitional, in-between places that should feel familiar but instead feel deeply wrong. The hallways, floors, and lighting are sterile yet distorted. They look like a subway station, or maybe an office, or maybe a fever dream of both.
The visuals are backed by excellent sound design. The ambient audio hums with dread, with occasional unexplainable noises just at the edge of hearing. Footsteps echo in ways that suggest you’re not alone. The music is minimal but effective, kicking in when you least expect it.
Despite being built in Unreal Engine 5 (which has its usual performance hiccups), the game looks great. Some players have noted frame drops on level 2, but the visuals overall—textures, lighting, and animations—carry a unique and haunting aesthetic.
What Works:
- Simple Yet Engaging Mechanics: It’s just you and your eyes. No weapons, no inventory, no maps. Just observation and deduction.
- Replayability: With multiple endings, Hardcore mode, and lots of small details to uncover, the game encourages repeated runs.
- Immersive Sound & Visual Design: The sound and visual cues do most of the narrative work here, and it’s impressive how effective they are.
- Price-to-Content Ratio: For a $5 indie game, it’s absolutely worth the asking price.
- Tight Runtime: You can finish the game in under two hours on Normal, but Hardcore runs and achievement hunting can stretch that to five or more.
What Could Improve:
- Short Length: Some players may wish for more levels. Three floors feel satisfying but leave you wanting just a bit more.
- Performance Issues: As with many UE5 games, frame drops can occur, especially on certain setups.
- Controller Options: Lack of y-axis inversion is a small but frustrating miss for controller players.
- Difficulty Curve: Some felt the final level was easier than the earlier ones, though this could be due to improved familiarity.
The Entity & the Endings
Without spoiling too much, yes—there is something following you. It’s subtle, it’s creepy, and it’s a fantastic use of restraint in horror design. The Entity never fully reveals itself, but its presence is always implied. This helps maintain a persistent tension, even when nothing is happening.
The game offers multiple endings depending on your performance and the choices you make. These endings give the player a satisfying sense of conclusion while keeping the overall mystery intact. It doesn’t spell everything out, which fits the genre perfectly.
Liminal Exit: Liminal Exit isn't flashy. It doesn't scream at you with jump scares or throw monsters in your face. Instead, it whispers. It nudges. It watches. It makes you question whether that fire extinguisher was there a minute ago. This game belongs in the same conversation as Exit 8, Observation Duty, and Backrooms titles, but it brings enough originality and polish to stand on its own. It’s short, yes, but it doesn’t waste a second. For fans of atmospheric horror, liminal aesthetics, or just great indie games in general, Liminal Exit is a must-play. – Flare
