“Every element in To Leave – from its very opening all the way to its conclusion – has been crafted to challenge your skills, your wits, your intuition, and your perceptions. Most importantly, To Leave seeks to stir interpretations. Although much will be indecipherable to you from the onset, be assured that everything in this work is deliberate, everything is relevant. Keep close attention to every detail. It will be worth it.
Warning: To Leave deals with existentialist themes, including suicide, depression, and social alienation. If you think you need it, ask for help. Do it now.”
This is the beginning of To Leave and I know you’re thinking “that’s a bit pretentious.” You’re not wrong. This game takes itself super seriously. Especially for a 2D puzzle platformer. Does that mean it’s bad? Not necessarily, but it certainly is an acquired taste.You play as Harm, a man mourning the recent suicide of his beloved who decides to execute his master plan despite wanting to join her in eternal slumber. What is his master plan? I’m not exactly sure. I am, however, sure that it means Harm has to slam some psychedelics, give his magic door a bit of his soul, and journey into the void.
The game’s art is wonderfully done, with a dark yet vibrant color tone and landscape. Harm’s apartment looks like it belongs to someone who’s constantly on mescalin and considering making an early exit. It is filled with grime and hap-haphazardly placed objects littered throughout. Not to mention his journals are filled with bat-shit ramblings and self-diagnosis which also serves as a way to better understand his motives and what to expect in levels to come. This will have all the psychonauts muttering to themselves, “that’s like, soooo triiiippy maaann.”
Each level is a temple located somewhere in the void. The first two hours will leave you thinking that this game is really, really easy. But don’t… fucking… fool yourself. This game is absurdly hard. I haven’t yelled at a television this loud since the first time I played Asterix & The Great Rescue on Sega Genesis. The final level took me around 4 hours to get through and sure, you could chalk it up to just me sucking, which very well may be the case, but the point remains, this game is very difficult.
You spend most of the game floating on your door, navigating through areas that at first are pretty vacant but as you progress, filled with all kinds of fun things that will literally smash into you and the dumb door back to the last checkpoint until all of your energy is spent and you’re left with nothing else to do except rip out another piece of your soul just to get up and do it all over again.
Now, I realize that I might be coming off as bitter. Which I kinda, sorta am. But I can’t help enjoy the irony of putting a suicide warning in a game that very clearly wants you to feel hopeless and give up. Saying that out loud makes me realize that it’s kinda brilliant, but it does make it a hard sell. If you are a bit of a masochist and enjoy the feeling of conquering repeated failure this game just might be for you.
To Leave is available for $9.99 on PS4 and Steam.
