The game was released in July 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade, and it has since been ported by Playdead to several other systems, including the PlayStation 3, Linux and Microsoft Windows.

The game is presented in black-and-white tones, using lighting, film grain effects and minimal ambient sounds to create an eerie atmosphere often associated with the horror genre.

As is typical of most two-dimensional platform games, the boy can run left or right, jump, climb onto short ledges or up and down ladders and ropes, and push or pull objects.

He had sketched a "mood image" of a "secret place" to get ideas, and the result, similar to the backgrounds of the final game, inspired Jensen to expand on it.

[3] Jensen initially tried on his own to program the game in Visual Basic around 2004, but found he needed more help and proceeded to create an art style trailer by 2006.

[15] He had only intended to use the trailer as a means to recruit a programmer to help him,[8] but the video attracted substantial interest in the project from across the Internet, eventually leading him to meet with Patti, who was also dissatisfied with his job.

[3] Jensen and Patti did not want to commit to major publishers, preferring to retain full creative control in developing the title.

[3] Playdead chose to ignore outside advice from investors and critics during development, such as to add multiplayer play and adjustable difficulty levels, and to extend the game's length.

[18] Playdead developed the design tools for Limbo in Visual Studio; Patti commented they would likely seek third-party applications for their next project given the challenges in creating their own technology.

Jensen wanted to create an aesthetic for the game without resorting to highly detailed three-dimensional models, and instead directed the art towards a minimalistic style to allow the development to focus its attention on the gameplay.

[20] The game was purposely developed to avoid revealing details of its content; the only tagline the company provided was, "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo.

[23][24] Much of the game's flow was storyboarded very early in development, such as the boy's encounters with spiders and mind-controlling worms, as well as the overall transition from a forest to a city, then to an abstract environment.

Two examples he pointed to was the use of electricity noises while in the presence of a ruined neon "HOTEL" sign,[3] and silencing the wind sound as the spider approached the boy in the forest.

[3] Carlsen, initially brought aboard as a programmer for the custom game engine, became the lead designer after Playdead found him to be capable at creating puzzles.

[37] According to producer Mads Wibroe, part of their decision not to release for the Windows platform was to avoid issues with software piracy, something they could control on the Xbox 360.

[38][39] However, in June 2011, users found that a trailer for Limbo appeared on the Steam software service, which video game publications such as PC Gamer took as a preliminary sign that a Microsoft Windows version would be released.

[41] Similarly, a possible PlayStation 3 version was projected based on the title appearing on the Korea Media Rating Board in June 2011.

[46][47] A Linux version of the game, based on a Wine-encapsulated package prepared by CodeWeavers, premiered in the Humble Indie Bundle V charitable sales event in May 2012.

[50] The PlayStation Vita version of the game was developed by Playdead with assistance from the UK studio Double Eleven, and was released in June 2013.

[21][63][64] Some journalists compared Limbo to previous minimalist platform games such as Another World, Flashback, Heart of Darkness, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Ico, Portal and Braid.

[4] Numerous independent game developers, in an organised "Size Doesn't Matter" effort, commented on the critical response to Limbo's length-to-price ratio.

The independent developers questioned the need to quantify that ratio, and noted that it only seems to be used as a factor in judging video games and not other forms of entertainment such as films.

Jake Gaskill of G4 TV was impressed by the complexity of the puzzles based on the two simple actions of jumping and grabbing onto objects, similar to LittleBigPlanet, with a variety of elements to assure "you're always facing something new and challenging" during the game.

[70] GameSpy's Ryan Scott believed that the game empowered the player to work through solutions themselves, and its puzzle design, "with its elegant simplicity, offers up what feels like a world of meaningful possibilities".

[73] Garrett Martin of the Boston Herald compared the art style and game design decisions to German Expressionism with "dreamlike levels that twist and spin in unexpected angles".

[88] Edge magazine's review noted that the few background noises "[do] little else than contribute towards Limbo’s tone", while the sound effects generated by moving the boy character "are given an eerie clarity without the presence of a conventional soundtrack to cover them".

[4] Chad Sapeiha of The Globe and Mail summarised his opinion of the game's atmosphere as an "intensely scary, oddly beautiful, and immediately arresting aesthetic.

[71] The New York Daily News' Stu Horvath noted that Limbo "turns its lack of obvious narrative into one of the most compelling riddles in videogames".

Haywald had contrasted Limbo to Braid, a similar platform game with minimalistic elements which communicates its metaphorical story to the player through in-game text.

IGN named it the third best Xbox Live Arcade title of all time in two lists, published in 2010 and 2011, in both cases following Shadow Complex and Pac Man Championship Edition.