I really wanted to like Animal Well. To some degree, I went in knowing what to expect. This would be a game akin to Tunic or Fez, where the game as it initially seems is not the game it ultimately is. Like those titles, there would be a fairly straightforward “game” to play, but that would be only the beginning of what I’d be meant to take away from the experience. There would be some deeper layer beneath the surface that would only be accessible if I paid close enough attention. Whether you call them knowledge-based games or Metroidbrainias (even if they aren’t always Metroidvanias!), the games in this newly popular genre require you to progress by expanding your understanding via observation, note-taking, and plain old taking your time.
Problem is, I’m just not that patient.
Maybe you’re like me. I love puzzle games. I love the feeling of being frustrated only to have that aha moment light up my brain like a Christmas tree. To me, that feeling of everything clicking into place is one of the best things gaming has to offer.
On paper, then, I should love games like Animal Well, but again and again I find myself pushed away by their obtuseness. I don’t relish the idea of poring over every screen, looking for subtle hints as to the underlying meaning behind things like random glyphs or the positioning of rabbit ears. I don’t want to retrace my steps over and over until, finally, something new occurs to me. I’m not the type of person to join a Discord and try to solve things in a community. But I do want to experience the aha moments that these games have to offer. The people who love these games really love these games, and I want to experience that, too. If only someone would make a game that was 10% as obtuse; maybe then I’d stand a chance at experiencing some of what this genre has to offer.
Enter Leap Year, a “clumsy platformer” where if you jump, you die.
Like Animal Well, Tunic, Fez, and their ilk, Leap Year initially presents itself as something quite simple: a platformer. You control a little guy who goes left to right or right to left, and the only button you have is a jump button. Cool, you think. I am a person who has played a video game before. I can do this. I have jumped before, and I will jump again — in fact, I will jump right now. So you do. And, as you do, your little guy leaps into the air, begins to descend, and, right before he touches the ground, turns from white to red and dies.
Funny! On a base level, Leap Year is a prolonged joke about what would happen if Mario had weak knees. On those merits, it succeeds as a moderately funny riff on the design of platformers, but, to be honest, if that was all that was going on here, I wouldn’t be inclined to write about it. While I do love a game that’s a prolonged metacommentary on gaming, I think a platformer where the entire point is that its main character dies when he jumps would probably test even the most postmodern player’s patience. Thankfully, that’s not all that’s going on in Leap Year, a game about learning to jump without dying.
The goal of Leap Year is to collect all the days of the month of February 2024. These 29 days, torn from a calendar at the onset of the game, are strewn throughout its game world. The very first screen of the game features both Day 1 and Day 29. Day 1 you can easily get by walking forward. But Day 29? It’s floating up near the ceiling, and if you jump to try and get it, you die. Try as you might, there’s nothing you can do at that moment to collect Day 29 without dying. So you move forward, as one does, toward something you might actually be able to do.
Soon, you learn that you can jump without dying, so long as the platform you land on is slightly higher than the platform you jumped from. This is not an ability you gain from a power-up or skill tree. You’ve always been able to not die like this. It’s just that, up until this point, you didn’t know how yet. The remainder of the game involves learning new things about how, exactly, to jump.
If I’m being cryptic here, it’s for a reason. To write about a Metroidbrainia is to encourage other people to try to figure it out for themselves, because figuring it out for yourself is, in these games, the entire point. What I will say is, if you are the kind of person who has read a review of a game like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes or Outer Wilds and balked at the idea of keeping a physical notebook beside you while you play, I can assure you: Leap Year will require no such thing of you. It will require, at most, about two and a half hours of your time, no notebook required. You will figure out Leap Year, and you will feel, like I did, a small facsimile of what I have to imagine people who figured out Animal Well felt.
I say facsimile because Leap Year isn’t subtle with the hints it gives you toward unlocking its secrets. It signposts them so loudly that it is impossible to miss them. HINT, the game screams. HINT OVER HERE. It’s capslock-level unsubtle. But I loved Leap Year for that. It wanted me to figure out its mysteries. Whereas titles like Animal Well and Tunic are more or less personality tests as to whether you’re the type of person to go galaxy brain or delete the game, Leap Year is just a pleasant little treat I think anyone can figure out. It’s as approachable as anything I’ve seen in this genre, and if, like me, you’ve struggled to enjoy comparable titles, there’s no better place to start than with Leap Year and its awkward little dude who dies when he jumps.
That said, there’s no doubt that the game trades approachability for simplicity. Leap Year is not going to make you feel like a genius in the way that, I assume, those brainiacs who finished Animal Well without a guide must feel. It’s a snack to a traditional Metroidbrainia’s meal. It’s a pond to their ocean. Still, I’m happy it exists, firstly because it’s very clever in its own right, but secondly because it makes me feel like maybe the next time around, when one of the harder entries in this genre arrives, I might stand a chance at finally seeing it through.
Leap Year, in showing me a glimpse of what it might take to really reach the conclusion of a Metroidbrainia, makes me excited for the next one. Hell, maybe I’ll even get a notebook.
