After completing Leap Year, I can honestly say that I have never before gotten to know (so intimately) every nook and cranny of a game level. Of course, I can’t tell you why, in case I spoil your experience. My aim is to tell you as little as possible about Sydney designer Daniel Linssen’s new game, but also to communicate how badly I want you to play it.
Leap Year is a platformer that begins by teaching you just one thing; that a normal jump on a flat surface will kill you. Why? Because you can jump up two tiles, but fall down only one. That’s it. I’m not revealing anything else. If you want to know more about how I ruined everyone’s Valentine’s Day while ‘collecting’ the 14th of February, among many other amazing things, you’ll have to discover them for yourself.
OK, fine, one more thing. I knew this was a special game as I was collecting its first 15 days, then day 16 opened within me a kind of pre-existing third eye that I did not know I possessed. And later, a fourth eye also winked open. I honestly can’t think of another game that would completely fall apart if you altered any single tile of level design. Looking for a word to describe this online, I happened across the genre terms ‘metroidbrainia’ and ‘knowledgevania’, where instead of progression being gated by a lock and key, as in a Metroidvania-style game, knowledge is your key, and the only reason you can’t progress immediately is because you don’t know how to. Leap Year is that experience, although not in a narrative or metagaming sense, like in Overboard. In this case, your teachers are corridors and corner pieces, and no, stop, Meghann, stooopp, you’ve already said too much …
The Art Of An A-Ha Moment
How did Leap Year get on my radar? I have played Linssen’s games for many years. There are an impressive 45 of them on his itch.io page. He tells me, “I started releasing games 10 years ago, and for a while, I was pretty prolific. I’ve participated in a lot of game jams, so most of the games are small, experimental things made over a few days or a weekend (though the rest of the games generally aren’t much bigger or less experimental). I love playing with weird, unique ideas and seeing where they go, and the tight deadlines mean I can take creative risks without the danger of wasting a lot of time.”
I have not played all 45 of his games, but I remember each of the ones I have because they all surprised me with a clever idea.
Consider Outline, in which you play as an eraser, scrubbing out line drawings as you pass them. A slightly malicious narrator goads you throughout, like a schoolyard frenemy. Platforms functionally remain where they always were, but after erasing them, you see through this page to the previous page (or level). It’s very hard to play unless you’re doing everything right or have a good memory.
Another example (and bear with me): Platformers frequently unfold in fairly predictable ways. The camera might follow your character as you navigate a level larger than the viewable screen area, like in Hollow Knight. Perhaps, although your character moves, the level does not, remaining static on your screen, like in VVVVVV. In Windowframe, you’re hunting vampires, but your arsenal of stakes can be used to pin the game’s window to your desktop, letting you use its edges for wall jumps or to raise the floor a bit higher, above spikes. In this way, it becomes a bespoke viewable screen area for the purpose of solving puzzles.
Linssen explains his design philosophy. “I think it changes from game to game. Often, I have a particular game mechanic in mind, or I want to explore an emotion that I want to elicit. For Leap Year, I wanted to play with the player’s expectations and give them a lot of ‘aha’ moments. A big inspiration was a print-and-play game called 12 Word Searches, which presents itself as a collection of straightforward word searches and slowly gets you to question your assumptions and realise there’s a lot more going on.”
I often think of Linssen’s games as ‘mechanical’, but another of his games, Sandstorm, is more of a story. It is an incredibly evocative experience, largely due to one aspect: the desert constantly swirls, changing your orientation. So south becomes east, then north, and so on, as you collect your wayward camel, over and over, while getting more and more lost. Somehow, you are organised enough to have brought flags to mark a trail, but are not organised enough to properly secure the camel at night. My god, I love that camel. I hope he’s OK, wherever he is. I wouldn’t know because I am being consumed by nightfall, once again having wandered too many flags away from my cart in pursuit of him. What’s the goal? To complete your pilgrimage to Mt Distant, maybe find a decent rope to secure the camel, and survive.
And, more recently, I played another Linssen title called Roguelight just because I appreciate a good pun. You’re a rogue in a dungeon that darkens the deeper you get, who can shoot arrows of light. As your supply diminishes, you’ll have to decide what matters more: visibility or saving arrows for shooting monsters. Either may eventually lead to a leap of faith into the dark, potentially landing on a monster’s head. Decision-making happens fast, especially when trying to balance risk and reward. Luckily, as you collect coins, you can buy useful arrow-related buffs and additional items for health, jump height and coin drops to use on subsequent runs. It’s a roguelite game about a rogue with lights.
Please Play Leap Year
I knew I was going to enjoy Leap Year as soon as I saw the name of its designer. Returning to how its incredible level was created, Linssen says, “The game has layers of understanding, separated by moments of realisation, and I started by designing the path I expected the player to take before they’ve had any of these moments. Once I had this, I moved on to the next layer, each time adding on to and branching from the existing paths. I blocked everything out in coloured squares until the level design was more or less finished, took a screenshot of the whole map, and drew over it.”
He makes it sound so easy.
Linssen’s games are delights of cognition, that moment where you understand his intention for your experience. He has organised his itch.io collection “roughly in order from best to worst” so I decided I’d better play the game he considered his worst just to see if it was actually bad. In Bouquet, flowers are expensive. Coins are collected through platforming and spent on constructing a bouquet for your darling. And again, there’s a cute twist. It’s great. Thus, I feel confident recommending all 45 of Daniel Linssen’s games to you. They’re all “name your own price” (including free), except for Leap Year, which is AU$7.50. I think I can carve him off some cash after 44 other excellent titles he’s happy to let you have for nothing.
Please play Leap Year. I’m quite bad at platformers and I found it exquisitely difficult, in just a few places, yet I never gave up. I was extremely invested in whatever was next to learn. Leap Year is the Baba is You of leaping, which you will only understand when you have played both. Thank me later.
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