Limbo, which came out a couple of weeks ago as part of Xbox Live's Summer of Arcade series of inexpensive downloadable games, stands out as dark, weird, and slow in a field dominated by bright, shiny, and fast-paced action titles like Hydro Thunder Hurricane. The utter lack of context is refreshing—you just get up and go without an omniscient narrator hectoring you—as is the casual grace with which the developers evoke dread and suspense. You're just a poky little kid trying to move through a dark, dark world (imagine Edward Gorey illustrating The Road) with a laughably small catalog of video game tricks to help you survive the bear traps, giant spiders, falling trees and other avatars of death.

Limbo boils down to a moderately difficult visual puzzle game, but even those of us who have burned out on them (or never really fell for them in the first place) should check it out strictly for the atmospherics. The minimal ambient soundtrack sometimes offers game clues, but more often just sets you up for the fear. Speed is almost never an issue, which is great for gamers who want a break from button-mashing. Character death happens quite a bit, generally with the grim detachment of a nature film, but the autosave feature means you rarely lose more than a minute's progress—so experimentation doesn't get punished. It's not flashy, but it is unique and thoughtful, and it will beat the shit out of you in a unique and thoughtful way.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.