With each release of a new videogame console, CPU or graphics card, hardware manufacturers, videogame creators and journalists quickly wax lyrical about "increased realism," "photorealism" and the like. This obsession is understandable. Unlike the movies, where from the beginning directors could just point their cameras at the world around them and take advantage of all sorts of natural phenomena, game makers have had to build up reality brick by brick--from pixels to sprites to polygons to shaders to physics processors--pitting their ingenuity against the limitations of the machines currently at their disposal. But as much as the march towards the holodeck has to offer us, it's just one section of the creative palette, and we shouldn't mistake it for the be-all end-all of this emerging medium. Not when painting, sculpture and animation have taught us that so much more is possible.

That's why we're cautiously optimistic about Limbo, an in-development platformer that's just starting to generate some buzz. The chiaroscuro art direction is reminiscent of German Expressionist masterworks like "Metropolis" or "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," while the gameplay and sound design (as shown in the teaser here) recall both the PS2 cult classic Ico and the just-released PSP game Loco Roco. Creator Arnt Jensen has worked as an artist on popular games like Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Freedom Fighters, but he's cut loose here in a way that's thrillingly unique. Here's wishing him the best--and hoping that more game developers renounce the Church of Realism for a fuller exploration of their medium's potential.