After emerging from the depths of Animal Well’s labyrinth of mysteries, I’m keen to play more games with hidden secrets and invisible puzzles. Leap Year is one such game, a puzzle-platformer slash metriodbrania about a little dude who dies after landing a jump, faceplanting into the ground with so much force it makes me wince. What at first looks like a platformer with a silly twist hides a hidden world of secrets and smart-level design.
When you first start playing Leap Year, everything seems relatively normal. You play as a little person merrily skipping through the world tasked with collecting floating calendar dates that make up the month of February. The game's core rule is that your little person can jump twice their height but can only survive falling once their height, meaning that the simple act of jumping becomes a matter of life and death.
Forced to follow this simple rule, breezy platforming levels become twisted and deadly. A pit of spikes that could be easily jumped over now becomes a puzzle for you to solve. You need to pay attention to what platforms you have available around you to overcome these obstacles, navigating them in a way that doesn’t end with your face meeting the ground.
This is where Leap Year starts to open up. You quickly learn that each level has been crafted in a way where there’s always a clever solution to whatever platforming obstacle you encounter. The level design not only hides an abundance of platforming puzzles but inspires you to take risks in a way that reveals some tasty secrets.
I really don’t want to get into these secrets as they are so satisfying to find, so I’m going to dance around a little with what I reveal. You’ve got your hidden paths and secret areas (the game’s Steam page says as much) but it’s how you get to them and how the game communicates it to you - that's what's special here.
Equipped with new knowledge, going back to previous areas reveals new information. Clues that were invisible before suddenly become abundantly clear and the level design only gets smarter after you realise this. I don’t want to say anything more for fear of spoiling, but if you love smart, thinky, level design and finding secrets then Leap Year is for you.
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