alt Hacker NewsThe article has a screenshot of the Stanley Parable, but misses an opportunity to reference Control (2019) which is much more directly influenced by the "liminal space" concept, and imagines a non-euclidian space called The Oldest House at 34 Thomas Street (a reference to the brutalist, windowless AT&T Long Lines skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, New York City).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74LLDhAhhI
It also very much ties in with the shared SCP universe, which itself has a number of Backrooms-like anomalies, such as SCP-3008 (https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008), which is like a typical IKEA, except its maze of twisty passages run to infinity.
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I mean if we're trying to source where "liminal space" started, I'd like to add Portal and Portal 2 into the mix. It didn't have the surreal, creepy components because jump scare horror games like Five Nights hadn't been popularized yet but the entire second area of Portal 2 where you're introduced to Cave Johnson and the older Aperture Science HQ is very much "liminal".
If we want to go deeper, then I really think its Earthbound's absurdist take on childhood adventures with cultists, ghosts, dreamscapes, etc. but I think at that point I might as well say dice games influenced things.
The Stanley Parable definitely plays with non-euclidean and liminal spaces - the room in the screenshot being one such example.
> which is like a typical IKEA, except its maze of twisty passages run to infinity.
For the 4 people on HN who don't know, "maze of twisty passages" is a reference to the this (the?) text adventure game:
Speaking of relevant games, there's also a Roblox game that my son has been into called Backrooms With Guns, and now I understand it a lot more.
https://en.namu.wiki/w/The%20Backrooms%20With%20Guns
I see others have mentioned Superliminal too, which was great.