Author’s Notes: This level that takes place on a mysterious, haunted prison isle. The player must overcome a series of Myst-style puzzles to find a way to reach the lighthouse. Limbus Island is a study in non-verbal communication, as the player must discover their goals and puzzle solutions solely through visual and audio cues.
Basic Details
- Title: Limbus Island
- File Name: hl2-ep2-sp-limbus-island-mod.rar
- Size : 2.91Mb
- Author: Brent Ellison
- Date Released: 07 April 2008
PlanetPhillip Download Servers
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Installation Instructions
- Copy ellison_limbusisland.bsp into your Half-Life 2: Episode Two Maps folder.
- Launch Half-Life 2: Episode Two
- Open the console and type map ellison_limbusisland.
- Press enter/return or click the Submit button.
- Play and Enjoy.
Screenshots
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots may contain spoilers.
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Reader Recommendations
11 recommendations, average score: 3.27 (out of 5), standard deviation: 0.56
Total Downloads
Please note: These statistics are valid from December 2010
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49Overall
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0Last 7 days
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1Last 30 days
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38365 days
Published
5th September 2008
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16 Comments
5th September 2008
There is no combat in this level, it’s an adventure. Personally I don’t enjoy these types of games and even considered not adding it to the site. That’s not because it wasn’t very good but because the site is focused on other types of games.
Anyway, I have and now you can play it.
The puzzles aren’t too hard and the ending is very good. The quality of the design and level itself is very good, although there’s too many invisible walls.
It’s a shame that the basic idea couldn’t be merge with combat.
If you enjoyed Myst and similar games then definitely download, play and comment but if you are looking for HL2 universe combat, give this open a miss.
5th September 2008
I’ll try it.Played all the myst series.
5th September 2008
This has puzzles simular to Myst and Riven, still got ‘em all, I agree there could have been some combat, but on the other hand, a nice walkabout to find and solve puzzles is refreshing also!
6th September 2008
When I try to play the map, for some reason, the AI disables itself after completing the very first little puzzle. So as I try to progress through the map, any hints given by NPC’s is removed. Any help?
6th September 2008
In console, type ai_disable 0
7th September 2008
I thought it was a refreshing change of pace to solve puzzles like that. For what the author is trying to accomplish, I would say he succeeded.
The level design is a little plain, and there are a lot of invisible walls. It would be better if the size of the level was decreased, or more content was put into what’s there. I get tired of walking long distances with nothing to do or look at. Some well placed combat would help, in areas that won’t make the player miss a clue. Some more puzzles like the floor tiles would be nice, that genre of puzzle. You don’t see things like that very often in mods, but they’re still fun.
It’s not great, but I enjoyed it. Only play it if you like puzzles and don’t mind the lack of combat.
7th September 2008
I’m all for mods and maps that try to be a little different from the usual “shoot em up” – although this one I can’t say that enjoyed for the reasons below.
This is the only map that I’ve come across that actually made the game disable the AI, and even trying to activate it again using the console just didn’t work. It seems to disable itself once you quick load or load a previous saved game from the map.
I also had some major, and I mean major, framerate issues after about 10 minutes of play. From the usual clean and fluid framerate it always went down to 5 frames per second, usually when looking into one direction.
Apart from the poor performance I didn’t really understand the ending. So you made it to the lighthouse
SPOLIER BELOW
and then into the elevator. During the ride you see people buring and screaming until the elevator snaps and starts to free fall. After the blackout it resets itself back to the beginning… did I do something wrong? Or what? I did all of the 6 puzzles.
8th September 2008
Loke, the same thing happened to me, it seems a bit redundant. I managed to play the level and was satisfied by solving the puzzles. It did seem a bit plain, but that wasn’t the aim of the map in my opinion.
9th September 2008
I got the AI_Disable thing, and like”Loke” couldn’t get it to re-enable, very frustrating. It sorted itself out on a new game, but I got so fed up when the NPCs kept disappearing and not giving any clues or anything that my normal patience with most mods evaporated and I gave up….Is it worth trying again?
I’m sure there are some nice ideas in and among but really, more clues please……
13th September 2008
Ha! I came here to comment on my own level but noticed that Brent’s is up here as well.
The ‘Myst’ comparison is very good. I also likened the atmosphere in this level to a Silent Hill like experience, though more for the atmosphere than true horror. Personally, I really enjoyed this level and Brent’s unique approach to putting it together. I also helped him troubleshoot and revise his puzzles a bit, though I’d say 99% of this is all his work. I’d definately recommend it to someone looking for something different.
This is definately not what I would call a ‘Half-Life 2 level in the traditional sense. It’s more an experience unto itself that just happens to use the Half-Life 2 engine. The story and most of the mechanics are a far cry from the original game, so I think people going into it expecting a Half-Life 2 like mixture of puzzles and action will be disappointed–that by no means says it’s a poor level, just that it’s different and unique.
The best expectations to go into when playing this map are to expect an interesting, atmospheric puzzle experience with a unique ending. Honestly this was one of my favorite maps out of those my cohort completed simply because it was so vastly different from the other stuff we were working on and the atmosphere really worked for me.
**** Some spoilers below *****
Someone mentioned being confused about the ending and it seeming repetitive. This is actually intentional–what Brent is trying to convey here is the idea of Purgatory, another concept you see referenced in the Silent Hill games. So, hopefully that makes the ending make a bit more sense.
14th September 2008
A neat little puzzle romp. Puzzles were easy to grasp without being too easy to complete. Not a fan of the ‘turn the crank’ puzzle, seemed to be filler. Also, saw that others complained of too many invisible walls, but I didn’t view it as a problem. That one complaint aside was very impressed with the game as a whole. Would like to see more like this.
3rd November 2009
I really liked this.
Some of the puzzles were really inventive. They weren’t too difficult to the point of frusturation, but they were hard enough that they took some thought, which made it satisfying to solve them.
There are some problems that people mentioned before like the invisible walls and the slow pace but they aren’t that big of a deal.
SPOILERS BELOW**********
I suspected that I was in purgatory just from the general feeling I got from the map which shows that they really conveyed the atmosphere well. Took me a little while to figure out the title (limbus=limbo). The ending where you “moved on” to the real afterlife was one of my favorite endings for any mod I’ve played although I don’t get why it restarted.
13th April 2010
This was an interesting puzzle map.
I don’t know that the map disabled the AI on me. I tried jumping in the water right away, so had to try to load my save. Absolutely could not reenable the AI, so I started from scratch. (Near the end I fell in the water again, and just played through. When the elevator ride was over I played again and the AI didn’t disable itself.)
The puzzles are easy enough to figure out. I didn’t mind the invisible walls too much, because walking on the path was easier. I hate not having the suit, though–I’d like to be able to run when I’m backtracking rather than bunny hop.
22nd April 2010
I’m not a big fan of puzzle maps either. But this was OK. I was able to figure out the puzzles out without any frustration, which is good. Playing hard puzzle maps that do cause me frustration is not fun so why would I want to do them. So, this one was good. Not too hard and not too long. I did get the ending.
22nd April 2010
I liked this. Most of the puzzles were pretty simple, the tricky part was just figuring out what constituted positive feedback.
It did an excellent job of capturing the feel of Myst, except without the cut to the new location you moved to that caused you to get disoriented.
The only problem that I really noticed was that it was entire possible to only do about 2 or 3 of the 4 – 6 puzzles and still finish the game.
I’d very much like to see a more extensive puzzle island done in this style, but perhaps with sprinting enabled so things can move a bit faster.
24th April 2010
Nice puzzle mod with a somewhat creepy atmosphere, what with the ghosts and the blanket of mist. It was nice to walk around listening to the sound of the sea and not being bothered. The ghosts helped by being clues to puzzle element locations. The dark nature of the game led to me missing some of the puzzle pieces, playing in a pitch-black room helped.
The ending was rather odd. I found myself on an, ‘express elevator to hell and going down’ to paraphrase Hudson!