Before We Leave | Review (PC): Colonizing is a bit like a puzzle

It is the dawn of a new day on your planet: after an unspecified disaster that destroyed your civilization, your inhabitants begin to emerge from the underground shelter to return to live on the surface.

No, we are not talking about a new one Fallout , But say Before we leave, a strategic title indie developed by Balancing Monkey Games which was published as early as 2020 on Epic Games Store with some success, but that now comes on Steam strong of partnership con Team17.

Before We Leave is presented to the public as a “non-violent city builder”, a description that, indeed, fits perfectly but… is also a bit misleading.

The lovers of strategic 4X, of the Civilization and of the various Paradox games, could startle at this definition; where is the challenge and where is the sense of omnipotence if I cannot conquer other peoples or if I cannot erase other civilizations from existence?

I admit I thought such a thing too.

Yet, from the very first moments of the game it was clear that the difficulty and that "sense of omnipotence" typical of strategists are elements perfectly included in Before We Leave, simply these they are not found in the usual mechanics of combat, diplomacy and conquest.

I'm out of the bunker

Let's start from the narrative premises.
After years (centuries?) Of life in the underground bunkers, the inhabitants begin to come out and reclaim the territory abandoned by the "ancients". In this context, the player must try to repopulate the planet, divided into different continents that the game calls "islands“, Gradually rediscovering the ancient ones technologies in the form of colored resources that humanity once used to thrive, e exploiting the ruins and ruins of the old civilization of yore.

So what is the meaning of the title "Before We Leave"? Where do these inhabitants have to go if they have just returned to repopulate the planet?

Well, we're not alone in the universe: on the one hand we have other colonizable planets with their islands and theirs biomeson the other hand we have a looming threat that in advanced game modes can really give us a hard time ... and that opens a window on what happened in the past to the ancestors who confined themselves to a bunker.

"Before leaving" then takes on a double nuance: on the one hand it indicates the immense and long preparations to move to new planets, and on the other hand it refers to the reasons why the ancients, before us, had decided to hide in underground shelters.

Either way, it's not just the alien threat a force the player to leave the planetindeed, the presence or absence of such a game element is optional in the configuration of the games, and what will most motivate the inhabitants to look for a new home is the game itself with its mechanical.

A strategic one ̶4̶X̶ 3X

In the introduction we said that the official description of Before We Leave qualifies the game as a non-violent city builder, but we add that the whole game structure is a long puzzle game: the research tree with the various buildings to unlock, the artificial resources produced by us and the technological ones to be collected from the deposits of the ancient inhabitants, the placement of buildings on the "Civilization" hexagonal grid, everything is balanced so that one thing is preparatory to the other, and so that everything happens simultaneously with the exploration.

To access a particular resource, for example, it will be necessary to land on a new planet, and to travel to the new home, an incredible effort will be required in terms of investment of space and resources. Slowly every piece of this huge puzzle made of interlocking mechanics it fits together to form a relaxing but incredibly fun game experience for the degree of challenge.

It is not easy to try to match the right buildings in the little space available without making the inhabitants unhappy (and unproductive), let alone when after having scoured the whole planet you discover that you have to migrate to another, and that to do so you need to to set in motion a great deal of activity.

While having a immediate and easy to use, Before We Leave hides a satisfying depth of play, heightened precisely by this skilful interlocking of preparatory breakouts. It could be considered almost a 4X, except that one of the four Xs is absent (Explore, Expand, Exploit, ̶E̶x̶t̶e̶r̶m̶i̶n̶a̶t̶e̶), unless the barbaric exploitation of the planets is considered the missing extermination component.

Obviously, one could not be missing environmentalist component in such a game: pollution, compulsive exploitation of resources, deforestation and so on, there are many elements that try to communicate to the player the importance (and almost impossibility) of coexistence with nature with a lifestyle dedicated to total exploitation of its resources.

Before we leave

One of the coolest things about the whole Before We Leave gameplay is the exploratory component. Beyond the graphics of the planets and hexagonal cells which, let's face it, have their own charm, what the game subtly attempts to communicate through exploration is that the progress of civilization is an end in itself.

In theory, the inhabitants of an island could easily live with the technological level reached without going to look for new resources. The player could easily live on sustenance, leaving the inhabitants on the only island available with only the necessary technologies known. It is only by exploring that the player finds other resources and, as a result, also finds a reason to progress with scientific research which leads to the discovery of new and increasingly polluting technologies.

Exploration, construction and puzzle dynamics are enhanced by the beautiful graphics of game. It is really enough to take screenshots at any time in the game to find yourself in front of a wonderful evocative image of one strange post-apocalyptic world where ancient and futuristic technologies continuously mix, the whole represented almost as if it were a spherical board game board, complete with pawns-inhabitants and animals.

Even the graphic effects help to enhance the already excellent figure that makes the visual sector of Before We Leave. Light, weather and clouds are all dynamic components that enrich both the game experience in the construction and reasoning phase, and in moments of exploration. If we really have to nitpick, personally the graphics of theinterface they don't drive me crazy. With such a title, perhaps something different would have elevated the already excellent graphics even more.

The audio sector is also excellent, especially as regards the ambient and game sounds. Too bad for the music which, although excellent and always spot on, is immediately repetitive since the game sessions are really very long. About lunghezza, don't expect hit and run games on a game like Before We Leave, where even the tutorial can steal at least 5 hours of gameplay.

Before We Leave è un atypical strategic with puzzle game dynamics. The absence of peoples to subdue and fight must not deceive you: the title, thanks to its immediacy and its original graphics, will drop you into a universe relaxing, but that doesn't mean the gaming experience can't be full of pitfalls, starting from the limited space available to optimize up to giant alien threats.