Liminalita is a procedural art walking simulator I started designing after Procjam 2021. It was directly inspired by an entry from that jam called I Don’t Get It—a minimalist walking sim in a single looping room that stuck with me long after I closed it.

I wanted to explore those ideas more deeply. I’ve always been drawn to that feeling of wandering in a space that’s coherent but impossible—something Antichamber did masterfully. Rooms that change behind you. Stairs that lead nowhere. Floors that don’t act like floors. I wanted Liminalita to live in that same spirit of unreality—less of a game, more of a place you fall into.

Tools & Origins

A few months before starting Liminalita, I’d picked up Godot for the first time. I used to write Crystal bindings for the raylib library, so game development wasn’t totally new to me, but 3D space, shaders, and Godot’s scene system all were. Still, Godot made it possible for me to build this thing the way I imagined it.

Early on, I thought I’d try implementing an outline shader for stylized edges. Easy, right? Absolutely not. I wanted crisp outlines from far away, but the shader broke down at distance. Someone was kind enough to share a base for it, but I definitely butchered it trying to make it do more than it wanted to.

Building the Gallery

The game started with a gallery-style lobby area, which has grown into a kind of procedural museum. Here’s what you’ll find:

• Free Exhibit Tour: A walkable path with procedural paintings, statue rooms, and a small garden—more like a warm-up to the stranger things ahead.
• Infinite Exhibit: A square hallway loop that folds in on itself, where the paintings subtly shift as you walk. You can’t escape until you walk back the way you came.
• Aquarium Exhibit: A water shader creates an immersive underwater gallery. You fall into the tank and walk among procedurally-generated schools of fish. It’s a simple trick: one animated fish on a smooth path, duplicated and offset to form schools. Rotate and randomize the path progress for variety. Cheap and seamless.

Tricks and Illusions

Liminalita is full of little mind games:

• The Atrium Room: When you walk up to the second level, you’re quietly teleported back to the ground floor. The illusion is preserved because the room resets while you’re not looking. It feels like a glitch in the world’s logic, but it’s intentional.

• The Hotel (work-in-progress): Inspired by the concept of Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel, this is an infinite vertical space. Each floor is procedurally generated as you descend. The trick: when the player leaves the hotel lobby and looks away, the staircase shifts downward, making it seem like there’s always another floor to go.

  • Some floors are made from a 3D tilemap that mixes random layout chunks.
  • Others are handcrafted, like a motel courtyard with a pool.
  • An elevator on every floor returns you to the lobby—if you want to leave.

Watch the Progress

If you want to see how this all came together, I’ve been documenting the build in a YouTube devlog series: 📹 Devlog Playlist – Liminalita

Liminalita isn’t a game about winning or solving. It’s about walking, witnessing, and feeling just a little off-kilter. It’s a space where the rules bend and the walls rearrange themselves when you’re not looking.

Thanks for following along. — sol.vin