One Leaves Review: No Smoking

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, surprise game launches are becoming more and more common. Recently, One Leaves mysteriously appeared and vanished from the Xbox Marketplace as a free title. This, coupled with the fact it’s a horror title piqued my interest, prompting me to seek it out (you can find it here, since it still is not shown on the forefront of the marketplace).

The premise is quite simple, as you’ll begin caged with three other dimly lit figures, with a macabre message scrawled on the wall in flames. A gravelly voice seeps through the intercom informing you of your situation – only one of the four of you will make it out of the dastardly Saw-esque game of life and death intact.

While the premise alludes to this being a multiplayer affair, which will likely be done in the near future if there isn’t one tucked away on Steam already, you’re working against the invisible clock instead of real people. Like 99% of the horror titles on the market today, this is primarily a walking sim with some very light puzzle solving. You’ll spend your time scouring a dilapidated high school, hospital, morgue, and…. well, something else entirely. The puzzles found within are extremely basic, where anyone who can follow simple directions from audio or visual cues can solve. The last area, which is the most impacting overall, is by far the best part of the game as you’re dropped into a procedurally generated maze that showcases some of the most disturbing imagery I’ve seen in a game in quite a while. This area has one singular goal; get out before the other poor souls trapped within the game.

If you follow the suggestion for setting the brightness properly from the onset, the game looks decent in most cases and immaculate in later areas. Outside of singular assets that look poorly rendered, have perspective or appear flat, the game is extremely immersive and on par with most horror titles using the Unity or Unreal engines. The otherworldly final segment fares much better, taking clear hints from the Silent Hill franchise to provide a horrifying mixture of crude body horror that overtakes the poorly managed hallways. Sadly, the horror elements are mainly thematic and limited to the ominous environments, where there is never any true payoff unless you’re one of the poor souls that are terrified by the occasional jump scare.

The game’s true intentions are hidden very well, and if you want to go in sight unseen, please skip the rest of this paragraph as I’ll spoil the overall plot here. Are we good now? You’re sure you want to know? Ok, it’s an anti-smoking campaign. The true horrors you find within are essentially breaking down the dangers of smoking, which in reality, any kid or smoker needs to hear. The final area that I have been overly vague on is essentially taking you along mazes filled with tumors, black lungs, and rotting teeth. All of these double as collectibles that reward the player with some very meaty gamerscore if you’re into that type of thing.

Outside of movement feeling a bit clunky, the game controls as it should with the weakest link in the limited gameplay being the overly small sweet spot informing you that an object can be interacted with. When time is of the utmost importance (according to our contributor Matt you have to make it out of the complete game in around ten minutes to be the lone survivor), this is a point of frustration. I didn’t experience any further issues, but Matt had also reported constant crashing, prompting him to complete his time with the game via a PC using the Xbox Play Anywhere functionality.

For being a free game touting an important message, One Leaves succeeds in hammering the point home in an interesting way that offers a compelling final act. If you’re expecting something along the lines of Resident Evil 7 in terms of quality and horrors, I would steer clear of this, but at the low, low cost of free, it’s hard to not suggest taking this for a quick run, even if it’s to mop up the easy achievements.

5 out of 10

Pros

  • Very Atmospheric
  • It’s Free
  • Easy Gamerscore
  • Important Message Found Within
  • The Final Chapter

Cons

  • Some Wonky Assets
  • Object Interaction
  • Uninspired Puzzles

One Leaves was developed by Wahoo Studios and published by Oath Inc. It launched on PC and X1 February 28th, 2019. The game was not provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of One Leaves, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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