Adventure Corner ~ Leila

Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don’t come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.

In this edition of the column we take a look at Ubik Studios’s Leila, a point-and-click narrative adventure about the struggles of a seemingly ordinary woman.

Leila

We all have memories that we can’t seem to let go of: visions of loved ones who are no longer around, mistakes that we’ll never live down, and heartfelt moments that we’ll never experience again. Many of us would love nothing more than to go back to our past and fix what went wrong or spend a little more time drowning in happiness, but we likely won’t be unlocking the secrets of time travel anytime soon. Still, what if you could at least share your most personal memories with someone else to escape the loneliness of bearing their weight on your own? In Leila, a point-and-click narrative game from Turkish indie developer Ubik Studios, the year is 2047 and the titular character finds herself with a virtual reality kit that does just that. Players walk with her through this virtual world of memories, seeing her triumphs and regrets, living through the moments most important to her, and learning of the value of looking back on the road traveled.

The first memory is of a cozy coffee shop on a rainy day, of a time when all that mattered to Leila was finding success as a fiction writer. Aside from a quick tutorial and a few lines of exposition before this, the player is thrown right into Leila’s past without much explanation. She narrates over each scene as we go, sharing with us the details that make each memory key to who she is, but the real story comes through the puzzles that connect each scene to the next. Like other games in the genre, the player must interact with environments and objects to learn more about the character and her world, with each puzzle having a purpose or tying into one of the narrative’s themes. The first puzzle in this coffee shop, for instance, hides several objects in negative space, as if to say that looking beyond the immediately visible can lead to greater insight. A later puzzle asks the player to repair an abandoned robot, or to take something lost to time and imbue it with new meaning, much like Leila aims to do through this trip down memory lane.

Not much is explained at all about the VR program, but it turns memories into games, or rather, into puzzles that must be solved. Thus, the player has to overcome countless riddles, object hunts, and brain scratchers to reach the final memory at the journey’s end. The puzzles vary in their difficulty, but the aforementioned narration and a hint system prevents players from being stuck on one scene for long, making the path from beginning to end a smooth one. And despite their use of basic ideas like “search for this object,” or “adjust the item so it fits in this indentation,” the puzzles remain varied and entertaining enough to where both genre veterans and newcomers will find something to enjoy. The only downside is that the game can be beaten in about two hours, and the experience feels short, as well as a little shallow.

No one forgets their teenage years, as messy as they may be.

Unfortunately, the same can be said for the story. Divided into four chapters, each representing a stage of Leila’s life, the story is framed as both a character study and an exploration of life’s many colors, yet the short length doesn’t leave it with much room for depth. One chapter looks at teenage life, another at the monotony of adulting, and though all of these different situations are depicted with a commendable level of understanding and empathy, there is this realization near the end that so much more could have been done with these topics. The team frequently demonstrates that it has the skill to do more, but as it stands, there isn’t enough meat to dig into here for the story to be seen as exceptional. It’s worth noting, however, that a story as introspective as this one can easily resonate with people who want to reflect on their own lives or who may be dealing with struggles of their own.

There’s also another perspective to take into consideration. Ubik Studios highlighted the female protagonist and stated a wish to tell a story about women drawing strength from their lived experiences. Looking at it from that angle, there’s more to note about the game, as we can now view Leila’s character as being more of a stand-in than a character of her own. The relatively normal life she’s lived seems to have been written that way on purpose, so that players could relate with her and connect their lives to hers. The real worth of this tale might lie less with its character or plot and more with its relatability, especially for female players.

It’s worth it to take your time, just so you can soak in the atmosphere and get lost in the scenery.

Where Leila undoubtedly deserves praise is its presentation, which compliments the rest of the experience perfectly. The hand-drawn art and relaxing music creates a dense atmosphere that’s ideal for self-reflection and puzzle-solving, on top of just being a treat for the senses. The final cutscene, animated with love and accompanied by a full-length original song, is the cherry on top and a beautiful reminder of the passion smaller studios bring to gaming. One can’t help but wonder what this team would be able to accomplish with a better budget and more room to let their minds roam free, as the audio and visuals here are practically flawless. No game in this genre could pull its own weight without competent presentation, but Leila goes above and beyond in this regard.

Altogether, Leila has a compelling premise, fun moment-to-moment gameplay, and stunning art and sound design, but it comes up short with its playtime and its story doesn’t reach the heights it could have. For what is pitched as a narrative game, that may seem like a dealbreaker, but truth be told, there’s still much to appreciate here in spite of that. It’s sincere in what it tries to do, and the way the gameplay, presentation, and themes all enhance each other is pretty remarkable. It’s good, honest work on the developer’s behalf, and depending on who you are or where you are in your life, you could very well walk away from the game feeling better about the steps you’ve taken to get to where you are now. Despite its issues, I found myself respecting the game for what it was, and I enjoyed playing through it, even as someone who is not a big fan of puzzle games.

Disclosure: This article is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.