Two games turned my head this year, the full 360Ā° Exorcist head turn. Both were unexpected and surprising delights.
The first of these was a puzzle platformer laced with narcotics for the secret-hunterās brain. Itās a game that barges into your life without invite, pulls you into a frenzied, intense affair for a couple of days, then vanishes into the night leaving you wanting more. It has a beautifully simple hook, but this masks more depth than many of its platforming sisters.
It was Leap Year (Daniel Linssen, 2024). But please donāt jump for joy – youāre likely to die when you hit the ground.
Leap Year presents itself as a one-note platformer: here be a game where a normal jump will kill you. Over the course of the first few rooms, which feel more brutal than anything I would really call a tutorial, the player learns that only jumping up a slope or step is safe, because a leap across level ground will take in enough height for the resulting fall to break your legs. Far too many times, youāll jab the jump button and send your character on a one-way parabolic flight of death.
Rushing will kill the average gamer, but Groundhog Death coaxes players into being reckless. The design has been scuffed to give it the sort of intentional friction you get in Dark Souls or Getting Over It. The thing is most of it isnāt very difficult, but simply counterintuitive, hostile to platforming muscle memory. The skills you developed for a hardcore platformer like VVVVVV are tossed into the garbage disposal here and made into wormfood, because jumping just doesnāt work the way youāre used to. Checkpoints are liberally distributed but, be warned, there are plenty of occasions you can find yourself swearing at the screen. I have to do this parkour shit again?
It’s also full of comedy. The first room dangles the 29th day over your head just out of reach. Another early room is impossible to cross because you can’t leap over some spikes to an altar without smashing every bone in your body.
And you think this is it. Collect the ādatesā of the month of February with a mixture of cautious jumps and fine nudges. But why are there symbols everywhere? Why do largely empty rooms seem to have some purpose in their architecture?
Before we move on to the obligatory spoiler section, hereās the bit I did for Leap Year on my last Thinky Games stream.
TO THE VICTOR, THE SPOILERS
Leap Year is a bit Outer Wilds. Once you figure certain things out, you canāt have that experience again, that joy of discovery. Itās better to think of Leap Year as a mystery game where you, the famous mechanics detective, must figure out what makes this game tick. And once youāve solved the mystery, thereās no going back. (Except for the speedrunners. Thatās not me, bub.)
The small, lo-fi world of Leap Year is dressed with diagrams and glyphs. Every secret is on the critical path. You donāt necessarily need to resolve every mysterious sign to make progress – they are just a helping hand, after all – but they do point towards secrets you must uncover.
For example, one of the secrets happily highlights you’ve missed out the secret passage that leads to the drill room. Indeed, I hadn’t spotted that on the original way through. You donāt necessarily need to understand all of the signs in Leap Year; I never quite grasped the spiral symbol. But I donāt think thereās a single optional secret in Leap Yearā oh… yes there is according to this map of Leap Year I just found on Steam. Well, then.
But Leap Yearās biggest secret is that falling triggers superpowers and itās a secret because the game gaslights you into believing youāre a fragile little cookie. Perhaps Fall Year is a more appropriate name for the game, although that aināt nowhere near as cool.
The fact there are only three superpower fall states keeps the average player genuinely surprised as each one is revealed. Thereās a room at the top of the map designed to reveal the first power because you’re thrust into a trap which sets you up for an impossible jump. Normally, your little avatar is white, but then after falling just an inch, they turn red and red is the colour of death. But in this room, you fall further than expected and turn purple. Purple means you will bounce off the ground as if it is a trampoline.
This logical, uh, leap is not necessarily quick for everyone. I didnāt get how the purple bounce worked for a little while. I remember something weird happened in the top room but didnāt figure immediately that it was because I’d fallen far enough. And it works very much like the ordinary jump – if you purple bounce off the floor, the resulting arc isnāt high enough to give you a second purple bounce, so you can easily purple bounce into death.
And to most players it wonāt even occur that thereās more to find beyond the purple and so it is the job of the drill room to back the player onto a ledge again, to ask them to take another, uh, leap of faith. Thereās a drop in the drill room which is just deep enough to slip through purple intoā¦ blue.
The blue superpower is a shock. It is the last thing any of us might expect because it feels so gamebreaking. Fall far enough and you become a one-person drill who can drill indefinitely through dirt, rock and metal. Through anything in fact. But as soon as your avatar pops out of that sea of dirt, rock or metal, the drilling ceases – so youād better hope it isnāt a long drop to groundā¦
Discovering the purple bounce unlocks parts of the map that were seemingly unreachable. The blue drill highlights new exits that you didnāt even realise existed. Can you drill off the bottom of this screen into another? What about this one? And this one?
But Leap Year drives you inexorably to the calendar room which only opens once youāve collected 28 days of February. And what do you discover on the other side of that unlocked door?
A hole over a big drop.
It seemed like the blue superpower was so powerful there would be nothing beyond it. But there is. Of course there is. Beyond blue there is yellow. You fall, hit the ground andā¦ fall again upwards. What black magic is this?
It’s the classic gravity flip. And, my God, it feels like you have been witness to the ultimate metroidvania. Purple gave you access to inaccessible areas. Blue broke the boundaries of the map and then yellowā¦ yellow transformed the world. Hidden in plain sight is a completely different game, the upside-down world, which explains why the ceilings in many rooms seemed weirdly precise. I was blown away by how ludicrously well–designed it was.
The journey you then undertake is long and somewhat arduous, where you follow vertical chevron symbols to your final destination. You know exactly where this is headed: back to the start of the game, to close the circle.
And then you, a being that now walks on the ceiling, can finally snatch the 29th day, which has taunted you from the very first moment of play.
A cutscene plays in which the February page of a calendar is torn away to reveal March – and the game rolls the credits. Fuck me, I would have played a second Leap Year world looking for another 31 dates in a hot second.
This bite-sized beauty. My friends. Gaming does not get much better than this.
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> The first of these was a puzzle platformer laced with narcotics for the secret-hunterās brain.
Was what made me want to buy it.
> Leap Year presents itself as a one-note platformer: here be a game where a normal jump will kill you.
Here I stopped reading and bought it. I’ll be back when I play it for ab it.
But also, at the start of the article you mention two games but I see only one mentioned in the article?
Nice. If we’re lucky, the second game will be next week.
I’ve been on a little bit of a kick of running Windows games in Wineskin so I bought this but my attempt to try this didn’t work. Might work if I update my OS but not sure what else that might break. So it’s later for me on this one.
(Also have been playing some of the beta of part II of Bonfire Peaks Lost Memories which feels like opening my presents early.)
A real shame Leap Year didn’t work for you š You’re playing Part II of Bonfire Peaks Lost Memories in beta?!? I have no words.
Well there’s still hope for me for Leap Year. It may be that I just have to change the way I use Wineskin, which after a little searching is a simple matter of making sense of comments like
“Next I decided to take a chance on the reddit advice:
brew install –formula gcenx/wine/winetricks\
brew install –cask –no-quarantine gcenx/wine/wine-crossover\
That creates /Applications/Wine.app which when launched opens a Terminal with a modified path. Trying to use wine there complains that wine64 is not in the path. But find ā¦ -print | grep -i wine64 shows that it is located in the second item on $path.”
(When I say I’m on a kick of using Wineskin, I mean I’m playing one thing that launches in Java and should be trivial to get working on a Mac but I gave up. And Cave Story, which used to work on a Mac but was culled in the 32-bit purge.)
The BPLM2 beta is open! I just joined the beta branch on steam, or something like that. Corey sent me a very nice note (as my people say) about a bug I found.
@matt w – Leap Year works fine on Steam Deck (whether because of a native Linux build or due to Steam’s Proton I don’t know) so there should be hope!
SPOILERS GALORE FOR LEAP YEAR BEGINS HERE
SERIOUSLY DON’T READ IF YOU HAVENT FINISHED THE GAME
@Joel That was fun! It was much shorter than I expected but I’d rather be left wanting more than struggle playing a game I don’t want to play any more but are forced to by my inner demons.
I completely missed the beauty of the ceilings until the reveal but I am amazed by the level design and how there are a bunch of places where you can purple-poing before being taught it but you’re dis-incentivized from doing that. I did accidentally find blue-drilling when… There is this room just right of the 28-day gate where you drop down onto a person and there is a corridor leading to the gate room. I killed the guy, made a loop without dying and wanted to see if I can poing into those corridors only to drill through the floor.
I also almost figured out the spikes earlier than expected but the place where I tried to do it was impossible and I assumed there’s something else to it.
If there is one thing I’d complain about is the linearity – sure, there is some small branching here and there but the game forces you to collect all 28 days before you can collect the last one and I think the final cherry on top for the game’s metroidbrainia-ness would be making the gate knowledge based and a knowledge you only learn by getting all the days. (I don’t want to think how it could be done)
I think I’ll try to do the routing myself and go for the 15 minute achievement, that’s how cool I am!
SPOILERS GALORE FOR LEAP YEAR ENDS HERE
nothing to add, just glad you played it! i did the week it was released, and what a lovely and surprising time. i love manganore
@Daniel
Just for you, I will spoil that we played Daniel Linssen’s Super Super Super Super for the upcoming Side by Side series, picked because we loved Leap Year that much.
// AND NOW FOR THE REAL SPOILER BIT //
@Maurycy
I’m glad you got a lot out of it. I love that it’s short but incredibly rich. I understand from the speedrunners there are a few shortcuts in there which is where you can accidentally discover what you can do.
I guess it’s a fair point about the linearity but I can’t say it bothered me all the much as there is just one literal gate in the game.
Joel something is wrong with the mobile version of the site. The bg is black instead of white, the tex in the inputs is black as well so I had to switch to desktop version to type this comment.
Now for the game – I did two runs yesterday before bed. One before I discovered the timer option netted me the 30 minute achievement.
The second I did in 15 minutes 3 seconds…….
Anywah I did mo routing and no prep, I think it’s super doable wven if you’re a more of a casual player so if you’re looking for an excuse to play a bit more of this game :).
Also when you go fast the way you constantly have to fight your instincts is just
As for my complaint – i don’t seriously consider it a real issue. It was more of a case of “if I am forced to find something to complain about then here is one thing”.
When Outer Wilds was mentioned, I stopped reading and went to buy the game. It already was on my radar, but that was what pushed me.
SPOILERS SPOILERS
I agree that it’s a masterclass in pacing your discoveries – compact but great in making you comfortable with each “state” before gently pushing you to discovering another “state”. I also misunderstood the blue thing – thinking it was limited to the drill before seeing the writing on the walls of the left end of the ice biome, that specifically represents how many blocks you must fall for each state. I also sorta spoiled myself of the yellow state – there’s a part in the underside of the map, under the ice biome where you can fall out of the world, and if you jump you fall juuust enough to glimpse the yellow state before dying. I spent a few minutes there, trying to do something with that (I thought initially it had to be some kind of double jump/flight) before giving up.
I guess the only thing that’s a bit underutilised is the grid. I’m not the quickest person to catch on to puzzles, but once I discovered each state I was never in doubt if a jump to purple/blue was possible: the layout of the map is very good at communicating it visually without resorting to the grid. I’m curious to check out speedruns – maybe there’s more places to “sequence break” (if even this concept makes sense for Leap Year) that you can discover with the grid.
I really liked it overall, and I don’t mind the linearity – I’m sure there’s a ton of little optimisations you can do, but for a first playthrough I really enjoyed the pacing, more than a lot of other “metroidbrainias”. And, again, perfect lenght for what it is. It might be up there with Animal Well and Tactical Breach Wizards as a favourite of this year. Thanks, Joel!
@Lorenzo I’ll jump in straight to the spoilers.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
You should totally check the speedruns as there is ampt opportunity to sequence break. This is actually the first game other than Metroid Fusion that I am tempted to speedrun myself.
I myself had a lot of trouble judging when and where I can do purple and blue but also had a problem using the grid so I just, erm, lived with all the deaths.
But really, it’s a great game.
Such a good game. Funnily enough, that YouTube embed here must be the first time I heard the game’s music, since I was lucky enough to betatest it before any sound was implemented.
David! I haven’t forgotten about your email mentioning Outer Wilds. I just thought it had to be said.
Haha of course I had no recollection of that email, but thank you for mentioning it. I just found and read it. I was so frustrated with Jon Blow back then.
A guy in my friend group has been playing Echoes of the Eye on Discord for the rest of the group’s viewing pleasure. I think I’d probably enjoy a good Leap Year playthrough as well.
I was finally able to play this! Not sure whether it was because I updated my system (partly in order to see if I could play this) or just did something different in Wineskin. Very nice but I have a few quibbles. But first: very nice. Also SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I discovered all the powers in the exact way you were supposed to, where you reach something that obviously doesn’t work unless you take a leap of faith so you take a literal leap of faith and hey! Like Lorenzo, I did see that there was a yellow power by falling off the bottom, but I didn’t try to do anything with it.
Also as far as linearity goes, there were a few things I was able to do out of order without discovering a power prematurely (except maybe the side approach to spikes–though that also seemed like a hint that you weren’t supposed to find before you discovered the power, maybe? Like the explanation of what different levels of falling do, which was in a place in the ice walls that I didn’t reach until the endgame).
Oh I’m pretty sure the spiral symbol means “this is a safe place to emerge when drilling.” More or less. Also I think the first time I reached the altar room was from the bottom so I just hopped up through the spikes and collected my number, and then a while later walked back in the room and thought “huh, doesn’t look like you can cross this.” By which time I was doing a bunch of loops.
Quibble one! Puzzles 24-27 seemed a little repetitive and furthermore… it was awesome to realize “Hey if I kill the guy that cushions my drop here I can drill down to a new area” and execute that plan and have it work, it was less awesome to have all of the last few numbers be unlocked by “I can do the same thing except go down and right,” it was even less awesome than that to have the result be a jump scare where you emerge blind into a bed of spikes and each death-and-retry requires a fair amount of setup, it was even less awesome than that when the next part required doing that on two screens. I felt like I had figured out what to do and now I was playing Veni Vidi Vici. And then after that I was playing VVVVVV for real with the gravity flips! Speaking of which…
Quibble two! The endgame was a bit drawn out and maybe that’s why the complaint about its being linear? I did appreciate the “here’s where you go” markers and finally figuring out what that tall central pillar did, but I thought it diluted the WOW moment of discovering the yellow power. Not that there wasn’t a lot of content there! Just that (maybe because I was playing it thinking “ooh, I’m about to finish”) the disruption of my expectations made it feel a bit off.
Finally, connections to other games! It does indeed feel like the ultimate Metroidvania, because the “vania” in there is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which [HUMONGOUS SPOILERS FOR A GAME WHICH I HAVEN’T PLAYED AND WHICH MAY BE OLDER THAN SOME OF YOU] if you beat an apparently optional boss lets you skip (maybe?) the apparently final boss and then replay the whole castle upside down. Also, the game doesn’t really make you unlearn the jumping skills you learned from VVVVVV, because VVVVVV doesn’t have a jump! You flip gravity like in the endgame here (specifically, the endgame is like the parts of VVVVVV where most of the floor and ceiling are force lines that auto-flip you). In fact the notorious Veni Vidi Vici puts a trinket on the other side of an ankle-height unjumpable block, which can only be reached by reversing gravity to ascend and then descend through six screens of terror. The altar room here looks a little like a tribute to that.
HELLO MATT and I guess youāre forcing me into a distraction from my Blue Prince comments. Interestingly, I recall an easter egg or two in Leap Year if you use the powers at places that youāre ānot supposed to goā. I didnāt find any of these, of course, I thought the game was complete.
Letās talk about your quibbles. Itās been such a long time I cannot quite remember puzzles 24-27. And search is not helping – I guess Iād have to watch an LP video.
Quibble two Iād concur with, I feel like youāre ready much earlier for the end and it just stretches on and on. But of course itās part of the joke that the last date requires such a ridiculous amount of work and I canāt help but love it for that. Itās just like Veni Vedi Vici just to get over one small block.
Interesting connect back to Castlevania. I havenāt played that so you just totally spoiled it for me. Man, I was going to start that next week.
Ah 24-27, or 24-28 really, are just pretty much the ones I described, in the snow area you get to by drill down and right from the place where there are three people you can land on. I think it was less repetitive on a replay, and would have been less repetitive in the first place if I had just stayed in that area, but I didn’t. (There may have been something about the order in which I hit them that made it simpler to get out though.)
The quibbles are very quibbly though! Can’t really begrudge the designer (for quibble two) showing off the whole game upside down. I’m not quite sure about March yet but it shouldn’t be hard to persuade me into it.