HPL2 Polygon Budget

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As for maximum polygon number per level - I don't know (we'd have to ask Frictional I guess) but it should be fairly easy to check. Just create a sphere with 10.000 triangles and spam it in an otherwise empty level, trying the game after every sphere. When it crashes just count how many spheres you have.

When it comes to polygons on-screen however, it depends on what kind of culling HPL uses. (culling = keeping invisible polygons from being calculated) Some engines for example can only use the camera frustrum to cull away objects, some can check if an object is occluded by another one. Others have an approach where they will place "portals" in levels (for example at the entrance of a room) and cull everything behind it as long as the player can't see through it.

So depending on the method HPL is using for culling, a level with many polygons but a lot of corners and no clear lines of sight might even run better than a level with less polygons that is more open...