Leo’s Fortune (PS4)
If you told me there is a platforming game where you play as a furball with a lush mustache, I’d probably imagine a game that chose a simple protagonist due to budgetary limitations or a desire to keep things incredibly minimalistic. Leo’s Fortune does star the character described, but its level designs and graphics are not only remarkably vivid and detailed, but they’re positively drop-dead gorgeous.
While our protagonist Leo is only able to explore the environments he travels through on a 2D plane, the game takes no shortcuts in bringing this locations to life with astounding attention to detail. Right off the bat you’re thrown into a natural area of fields and forests, but rather than playing into the tropes of the unassuming first world of many platform games, these spaces make sure every piece of land you move across is remarkably detailed. Rocks and dirt have their own unique shapes and are arranged with each other in ways that aren’t distracting but work together to create a marvelous landscape that borders on the realistic. If you removed Leo and certain objects like the gold he collects on his adventure these would feel like they’re something far more focused on achieving realism, but even games that do attempt such things often have to cut corners because their main character’s interactions with the world are complex and they aren’t a simple furball that slides across the ground with ease.
Moving forward into the game continues to be a treat for the eyes. It’s actually a bit of a shame a good amount of it takes place in interior locations underground where there will be some inevitable visual repetition, but Leo’s Fortune does try to mix up these settings as well by having different objects constructed in the mines or caves to ensure the game never breaks away from its devotion to minute touches. Vibrant areas are still plentiful such as the bright desert and its crumbling ruins, but even the moody port town mixes in rain for something beautiful but subdued. You won’t be finding complex particle effects or the like though, the rain not actually hitting surfaces or building puddles, and even when the world is filled with plants or cloth they won’t always react to expected forces like wind. Areas focused on riding wind or jumping across perilous pits will use the movement of the background and platforming objects to emphasize the peril though, so Leo’s Fortune hasn’t completely sidelined animation in favor of fidelity.
Leo himself isn’t as basic in appearance as first described either. He is just a furball with two eyes and a mustache and he moves by just shuffling along, but his fur and mustache have individual hairs still readable in his design even as he starts to whip out some of his platforming tricks. Leo’s movement focuses a lot on momentum, a lot of the level design including slopes and ramps so he can build up the energy needed to clear loopdeloops or reach a higher platform. He can bounce off walls, inflate to glide across gaps, and quickly plummet by sucking in his girth, these tools often relying on the speed you’ve built up or helping you gather more momentum as you enter the next section. Movement underwater involves managing how deep you plunge and how you rise, floating through the air can involve alternating free falls and controlled flight to get around the thorns and spikes in the way of your flight path, and there are definitely moments where you will only get ahead if you manage teetering platforms properly or pick your moment to leap into an area. A lot of the area design is about properly harnessing Leo’s movement tools to safely navigate between dangers or clear specific gaps and jumps, and there are no actual enemies to be found so it’s all about Leo versus the platforming challenges ahead of him.
Despite how much focus is simply on the fluid motion and knowing when to utilize your special maneuvers, Leo’s Fortune also makes sure to wisely pepper in some puzzle focused moments so you don’t breeze through the game once you’ve mastered the movement. Moving crates can be about setting up the right path or using them to alter the landscape so you can properly build up the speed you need. Certain segments ask Leo to move around a small area to trigger switches in the right order to put everything in its proper place. Many moments might even just feel like part of the natural progression of the area even though you need to basically help build the path ahead by moving platforms or toppling pillars, and when you do come to a stop for something involved, it doesn’t involve so much work that it feels like it interrupts the game’s natural flow achieved through solid physics and responsive controls.
Reaching the end of a level never asks for insanely dexterous movement but still has a steadily growing difficulty curve to ensure you remain engaged, but beyond just beating the level, stages also have optional objectives to shoot for. Leo’s gold has been scattered across the land and scooping it up as you go not only rewards you with a star that goes towards unlocking secret stages, but these coins help guide you about the level well. As you’re learning how to handle the platforming mechanics of Leo’s Fortune the floating treasure shows you where you should be jumping or landing, and even as it becomes riskier later on to grab all the coins, it never leads you down pointless paths or requires you to linger in an area too long to scoop them up. However, there are still secrets to be found if you can master movement to an impressive degree, floating gears often meant to reward you for utilizing a refined technique. Beating a level in a set amount of time or doing so without deaths is also meant to incentivize you to learn how to move quickly and safely to earn those stars, but if you’re not too concerned about the extras you can take your time to figure out how to move forward while also not being bogged down by only missing out on a star if you require multiple restarts from checkpoints.
Despite just being an all around well constructed platformer, Leo’s Fortune doesn’t completely ignore its plot either. It’s not an in-depth dramatic tale full of characters and lore, but Leo’s quest has some interesting elements to follow. Over the years Leo amassed an incredible amount of gold but never found a purpose for it, but one day he finds his entire fortune has been stolen. Heading off into the world, he goes out in search of family members who all lived different lives from him and refused his efforts to lend them gold for one reason or another. Leo’s suspicions, the tales of how his family fell from grace, and the looming presence of a massive living machine that can reshape the world all make getting to the next step in the story line interesting. It almost has the feeling of a fable, and with Leo’s heavy Eastern European accent delivering the lines with some fun vocabulary choices he manages to be endearing despite his paranoia about who took his gold. It’s not a story that would earn a lot of favor on its own despite a few decent reveals as it unfolds, but it is a nice simple fit for a game that doesn’t seem like it ever wants to go for the easiest design route.
THE VERDICT: Stunning environments rich in detail steal the show in Leo’s Fortune and even looking at them is a treat enough in itself, but these surprisingly vivid locales also serve as natural hosts for the momentum based platforming that feels smooth and transitions into slower puzzle moments cleanly. Optional objectives and a fable-like plot add the extra layers to the experience needed to make it more than just moving about wonderful worlds fluidly, and once the movement style does click, there’s very little to fault Leo’s Fortune for and plenty to appreciate.
And so, I give Leo’s Fortune for PlayStation 4…
A GOOD rating. Graphical fidelity alone doesn’t make a game an entertaining experience, even if it’s something so well realized and future-proofed via high fidelity like the environments featured here. However, since Leo’s Fortune also has a simple but satisfying core to its platforming concepts and how they’re challenged across the adventure, you can still find an enjoyable experience between those moments you just sit back and marvel at the surprising degree of attention the stage visuals were given. The action and puzzles don’t feel lacking at all despite some simple yet iterative ideas cropping up, but the gameplay ideas aren’t quite as elaborate as the visuals. Leo’s Fortune never really treads into an area it isn’t ready to handle, but if this was the hypothetical minimalist game about a furball it would probably be easier to see Leo’s Fortune plays as something simple and fun with the right amount of depth to the movement mechanics that mastering them pays off but you can still clear levels if you aren’t totally adept at them.
While it isn’t the most beautiful game I’ve ever played, the wow factor of Leo’s Fortune putting all that care into making its world so vivid and uncompromising in its level of detail still stands out. It’s an enjoyably smooth platformer and could have got by on the fundamentals of its physics systems and movement techniques, but perhaps because of the accessible but adaptive character the developers felt they could pour a lot more resources and attention into giving the world a lovely coat of paint. To put it succinctly, Leo’s Fortune didn’t need for its world to look so good but it did need for its platforming and levels to be good, but rather than deciding to focus on one or the other, it pulled off both with aplomb.