Hello friends. This is a Let’s Play video of “Leap Year”. Leap Year is a clumsy platformer about knowledge and discovery. Explore a compact, hand drawn world filled with hidden paths. Understand the game’s secrets to reach new areas and collect all the pages of your calendar.
What looks at first glance like a crude little doodle of a platformer is actually one of the most ingeniously deceptive puzzle games to come along in years. Leap Year, from solo developer Daniel Linssen, hands you the simplest possible premise – collect the scattered pages of a February calendar – and then immediately subverts everything you thought you knew about jumping in a video game. Your character leaps two blocks high but can only survive a one-block fall, turning the most fundamental action in platforming history into a fatal riddle. The genius is that you start with every ability you’ll ever have; progression isn’t gated by upgrades but by understanding, making this a “metroidbrainia” where the locks are in your head and the keys are those exhilarating moments of realization. Across 40-plus rooms of charmingly hand-drawn art hiding fiendishly layered secrets, Leap Year delivers one of those rare, perfectly compact experiences that rewires how you think about an entire genre, all in roughly two hours and for the price of a coffee.
Developer: Daniel Linssen
Publisher: Daniel Linssen, Sokpop Collective
Genre: Action, Adventure, Precision Platformer, Puzzle Platformer, Metroidvania, Indie
Release Date: 14 Jun, 2024
Reviewed on: PC/Windows
Available on: PC/Windows, Nintendo Switch
Link: Steam
Review copy was provided.
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