A girl prepares for the journey of her lifetime. She’s studied for years to finally graduate and join the Guild of Maritime Exploration, and now she must prepare for her trip and say goodbye to the life she’s known up until now. Have you ever been faced with a life changing event that made you visit all the people and places you hold near to your heart? If not, you’ll see what it’s like with Clara.
Leaving Lyndow is the part of an RPG that you probably skip past when playing a full game to get to the “fun” portion of the game. If you’re not a fan of backstory or knowing why you’re playing a game, stay away from this, as that’s the entirety of the experience. This is a prologue to the studio’s upcoming game Eastshade, and is seemingly using the same engine and mechanics. That’s not to say this will have everything the full game will feature, but it’s a great way to dip your toes in to see if this will be up your alley.
This is essentially a walking simulator, except there are people to interact with. There are a few games in the genre with NPCs, but it’s likely to save on time and money that they are often barren, as a lot goes into creating characters. The first person you’ll come into contact with is your mother, and it may make you question what type of species you are, as they certainly don’t appear to be human. This design aesthetic holds true with the rest of the characters you meet as well, and some of the walking animations may even make you laugh, whether they’re meant to or not. To be quite honest, it’s not made clear, but it’s not especially important to the game. It also seems to chug a bit with the frame rate, which makes moving around seem taxing on your eyes.
On the other end of the spectrum for graphics, you have the environments, which are rich and lushly rendered. The focus outside of talking is clearly exploration, looking at all of the beautiful landscapes that you’ll be leaving behind. And as you are a painter in Eastshade, it makes sense that the world around you is gorgeous. While exploring, you’ll even have a vision – past or future, it’s not 100% clear, but certainly one of the more intriguing portions of the very short experience.
In addition to exploring and speaking with people, there are collectibles and mini-games to play. Of course, they aren’t all mandatory for the game’s completion, but they do add more to the experience. Start to finish, you can 100% the game in about 30 minutes. Leaving Lyndow is a short experience, but one worth taking if you’re interested at all in their full length title that the devs have been working on since 2013. In addition to giving a taste of the game, it provides you with the backstory that will likely not be present in the full release. It may even leave you wondering what happens.
6 out of 10
Pros
- Scenery
- Backstory
Cons
- Character Designs/Animations
- Frame Rate Issues
Leaving Lyndow was developed and published by Eastshade Studios LLC. The game launched on PC February 8th, 2017 and on PS4 July 25th, 2017 for $3.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Leaving Lyndow, check out the official site.
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