To Leave

Genre: Platformer / Misc.

Players: 1

.

Review:

To Leave, released on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2018 and ported to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2022 is… bizarre. I suppose this is technically a Platformer, but the Platforming sections are separated by a lot of strange bits of story that only vaguely make sense, like everything is inside some sort of fever dream or something.

I… think… players are taking the role of Harm, who is either a young man or a metaphysical manifestation of a young man, who is either using drugs or some sort of suicidal sacrifice to enable him to search a “Dark Void” via a flying door to try to connect temples to a… fountain… so he can go back to having sex with a glowing pink fairy, or… yeah, I don’t even know. I can picture the game’s creators right now lecturing me on how I just don’t get all the layers of symbolism and the deeply meaningful story here, but from my perspective this seems like a pretentious student project that not only failed the gameplay rule of “don’t show, play” and even the film rule of “don’t tell, show”, but also took such a scatterbrained approach to building a narrative that I don’t feel like I know anything that’s going on – I don’t know who the characters are, what they want, where they are… in all this game’s symbolism, I just feel lost and confused.

It’s not that there hasn’t been a lot of effort put into the presentation here. The game’s visuals are conceptually interesting, making use of a combination of animated cutscenes, 2D artwork, and perhaps a bit of 3D (it’s really hard to tell – this game’s imagery is all kinds of weird. Like I said, fever dream). This is all backed by an atmospheric, moody soundtrack that seems in keeping with this game’s dour tone, but doesn’t really inspire me to want to keep playing this game.

As for the gameplay… well, there is gameplay here, some poorly-explained Platforming with doors you ride and have to avoid touching walls or anything. However, this Platforming is pretty miserable, and does not make for an enjoyable experience.

Outside of that, it’s a lot of written dialogue and diary entries that’s all so steeped in those layers of symbolism I mentioned before that it just seems like it’s filling up space rather than actually explaining everything. Just dragging out the game’s pacing, making it take even longer to get from one dull Platforming section to the next dull Platforming section.

Look, I’ll cut to the chase – I hated To Leave. Perhaps that’s because I don’t “get it”, but what I did get was a terrible Platformer made worse by a dour, perplexing and nonsensical story. The visuals here are quite striking, but that’s not enough to make me want to spend more time with this game. I suggest you don’t either.

tl;dr – To Leave is a Platformer with a lot of… story… that’s nonsensical and drags down the pacing in a game with what was already some pretty poor gameplay. I don’t doubt that this was a very personal project to someone, and there are definitely elements of the presentation that make for an interesting spectacle, but they don’t make for a very enjoyable game.

Grade: D

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}