Superliminal is a puzzle game that uses optics and forced perspective to create increasingly difficult challenges for the player to solve. The player uses their mouse or controller to interact with objects in the environment in myriad ways to solve puzzles and make it through to the next level. The game is played from the first perspective, placing the player in the role of the main character. 

At the beginning of the game, you are a test subject at the Pierce Institute of Technology where they are working on something called SomnaSculpt. You enter into your dreams, where you are told that you will be woken up at a certain point. The only problem is that you do not wake up when you are supposed to. The player needs to make their way through several layers of dreams in order to wake up again. 

Players can pick up and manipulate objects in the environment using forced perspective. For example, picking up a small chess piece and moving it around so that it appears larger to your eyes will actually change the size of the piece in the game. The game encourages you to look at the objects in the environment and figure out how to manipulate them in order to solve the puzzles and move to the next dream layer.