I profoundly believe Leila is one of the few games with the gravitas to back up the story it tells yet it’s also true that it ends just as it starts to pick up. A difficult balance to strike, certainly, but for a game that can be completed in an hour (and 100% in 2-3 hours), it leaves much to be desired.

That said, Leila should not go unnoticed. The game begins at a desk in the year 2047 (did you notice 2047 is closer to 2025 than 2025 is to 2002?), featuring one of the prettiest menus I’ve seen in a while. From there, you relive fragmented memories in a virtual setting that functions like a "Mind Forest," akin to Sherlock’s palace. As you progress, the experience becomes increasingly gamified or so the game claims.

The puzzles are solid, though I never felt Leila fully found its footing. It dabbles in a bit of everything:

Verbal reasoning puzzles (familiar even to survival horror fans) are essentially deductive challenges, you can track back to Layton or Phoenix Wright. One of those puzzles will be tied to the tale of Layla and Majnun which was interesting to see. Then there are formal operations like the Towers of Hanoi, tied to an achievement requiring "fewer" moves implying you must deduce a more economical solution. However, I feel like the developers fail to communicate what "fewer" actually means.

Side note: For that achievement alone, I spent over half an hour. Mechanically, the solution can be parsed out (around 40-42 moves). If that is the case though, I am unsure how many people will be familiar to this concept to do the whole equation of it so I'd be glad if the amount of ''fewer'' amounts could be included in the achievement description.

Environmental puzzles range from perception-based challenges (Pareidolia) to aligning objects that mirror parts of Leila’s life, assembling geometric shapes symmetrically, or simple point-and-click "hidden objective" puzzles—sometimes evoking Myst, other times Unpacking. These rely on inductive reasoning (provisional generalizations), demanding observation, guesswork, and verification (think Machinarium or Fez). They can be easier to imitate than deductive puzzles in certain contexts.

Abductive puzzles, sadly, are not really a part of ''a bit of everything''. While some logicians consider abduction a form of induction, it’s its own beast, delivering immense satisfaction when executed well (see Return of the Obra Dinn, Baba Is You, The Witness). Why compare this bite-sized game to those? Because curiosity is central to puzzles, often boiling down to: What is plausible? It has to revolve around that very question. Given the studio’s resources, if this is their answer, I’m happy to experience it. As a debut from a three-year-old studio, Leila oozes plenty of character but I can’t help but feel it could’ve leaned more into reasoning and less into brute force, given the narrative it’s trying to tell.

I wouldn’t want Leila to be seen as a "games for impact" bait. It has a clear, direct message (as it should), and I'd like to believe it’s empowering to women. However, its theme — facing problems (you can delay them, but never escape) feels one-dimensional. Not that you should doubt Leila, but her life is presented in sterilized vignettes. Are the parts always greater than the sum? I can’t say, because the mundanity of life and coming to terms with it is a process, one that can’t be shaken off in five minutes. I'd vouch that one could live a happy (as in eudaimonic) life even when they are stressed out daily and lack hedonia. This, however, is never fully explored and what we are left with is the parts with the belief that Leila has figured the things out somehow. It’s implied that this is achieved through self-forgiveness and solidarity (which the latter you’ll see in the final cutscene, though it’s much less explored). However, due to time constraints, it ends up feeling rather rushed.

I still do appreciate how the game tries to convey (hence gamify) this process: you repeat mundane tasks while Leila, visually depressed, moves slower, takes longer, and complains just like we all do. Yet, it still feels underdeveloped. And, perhaps this is just me, but I don’t understand why we’re solving a Hanoi or connecting wires as neither feels story-driven (even if I were to claim as such I still would be unable to state their impact on the ongoing narrative). When rules aren’t clearly established (like with the towers), it’s easy to feel lost (due to lack of contextualization) and get frustrated.

There’s a hint system that nudges without fully revealing solutions, but sometimes it’s arbitrarily blocked. A missed opportunity: why not block them out when Leila is depressed, framing them as a "Get your ♥♥♥♥ together" mechanic? The inconsistency itself is puzzling though even the whole concept of arbitrariness has been explored in puzzle games with a Brechtian lens (Baba Is You, again), so who am I to say anything? Additionally, in a game explicitly framed as a gamified experience, I'd be lying if I didn't say I expected more play with memories' malleability.

The hand-drawn art and animations are jaw-dropping, rocketing the game to the sky immensely. The dialogue, too, is grounded and relatable. Voice acting is great and the translation is actually done well. Any non-Turkish player (who more or less went through familiar stages in their teenage life) wouldn’t feel as alienated, since the in-game texts and jokes are appropriately translated into colloquial language. However, there are also a few nods that Turkish players would understand and grasp better which seems inevitable due to the culture.

The passion is there, all visible, and burns therein but it’s the studio’s job to steer players toward critical thinking not through solely didacticism (not to say it shouldn't be didactic but Leila isn’t necessarily preachy either), but through design. Had it leaned closer to What Remains of Edith Finch, I’d understand, but the best puzzle games linger in your mind. They have to live rent-free. That’s always the goal.

All that said, Leila has clever ideas, much like Leila herself has clever drafts in her notebook. There’s wit here; easter eggs that made me smile (cough Death Stranding and Tetris Effect Connected), a wholesome early-2000s setting, and an amiable soundtrack. All in all, you can fit in so much within an hour.

ps: Screenshots are good indicators of the game and they constitute 95% of what you'll be working with.
There is body horror in some gameplay sections but the game lets you skip them.
All the achievements are missable.
You can pet the cat. He's a grumpy one though.

★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆

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Atomfall sets itself apart from Rebellion’s usual catalog by dropping you straight into an unknown, hostile world. If that sounds familiar, it should but what makes it stand out is how it handles player choice. When dealing with the Quarantine Zone, your options boil down to the classic "Embrace it, nuke it, or ♥♥♥♥ it." Yet, no matter what you'd pick, the goal remains the same: escape.

Rebellion markets the game as a ''Survival-action'' and I don't usually suspect the dev tags. At first where I thought it would be something more akin to We Happy Few it turned out to be a sandbox action-adventure and while it's great at that most of the ingame systems are rather shallow (nevertheless still fun). The internet had the game wear its Fallout and STALKER inspirations proudly, but its real charm lies in clue hunting and open-ended problem-solving. It's more Chernobylite but even more open-ended where you piece together the story bit by bit and tackle obstacles your own way. If you love unraveling mysteries at your own pace, this is your jam. Better yet, you can finish the game however you want. That may mean doing almost everything or skipping a large portion of the game.

It still is a compact experience. My playthrough took 11 hours (with nearly everything done, minus one questline), and that's with some save-scumming (which is what we all do, right?) You could probably see all of it in under 20 hours. The in-game timer barely clocked 8 hours, though. There’s a speedrun achievement for finishing in under 5 hours, which is already plenty as you can already finish the whole thing under a hour without the much need of a guide. I suspect everything's doable in one playthrough (minus the speedrun, obviously) if you can manage your saves.

The main objective is straightforward: power up the Interchange. You need 4+2 atomic batteries (four for the sectors, two for the finale). At first, that sounds like a tough quest, but it’s not—big bad enemy robots drop them frequently, and once you get a trusty weapon and exploit their weak points (which is disappointingly easy), fights last barely a minute. You can kill traders and loot their batteries if you’re feeling like a good ol' sob. While I appreciate the agency, it somehow makes things feel reductive. Trading is an option and I do love trading and all, but why bother when violence gets the job done faster? Traders mostly reside in isolated places and I didn't face any real repercussions after killing them.

You get four handcrafted maps full of landmarks to explore (have not tried but I suspect you can sequence break). World design is excellent, offering multiple approaches. Questlines usually have more than two solutions (through NPCs or fighting your way in/out or trying to see if there's another area which you could utilize). It lets you mess around and I adore that.
The Interchange however is the highlight, evoking STALKER’s labs with its eerie, curious nature. It has some wings to explore and those were some of the intense moments of the game even if they are mostly optional. You never feel like you’re wasting any time even when you know that the questline you’re currently doing won’t be the one you’ll thrive for in the end.

Inventory space is tight, very tight to the point where you can't even stack items. But in a game this small, it surprisingly works. It forces you to prioritize (to spend them fast above anything else), though you’ll rarely run out of crafting materials if you explore adequately. This is a central core mechanic to STALKER already but in a huge map where you must organize things for over 50 hours is one thing and to do that in Atomfall is completely another. Luckily things are lighter here and not as tedious. There is no fast travel but it's a closed-world which you can sprint in about a few minutes. You tremble, your heart beats like a hammer (not a Metric reference🤞) but you won't stop sprinting! Unlike many of the open-world hugeass games you can sprint as much as you'd like. It's good as I can guarantee you this game is a backtracker's wet dream (isn't really tougher than any avg. survival horror).

Enemies do respawn (except some infected enemies like Thralls in the Interchange I believe), but most threats are trivial once you’re armed. The real danger? Those bullet-sponge Thrall bastards slowly lumbering toward you, everything else is cannon fodder. Unfortunately, the lack of enemy variety doesn't really help it. There are two types of infected, two types of big robots, three factions (Druids/Outlaws/Protocol Soldiers). There are swarm enemies (bugs, bats, rats) which would occasionally show up and don't present any real threat.
ps: You can't side with the Outlaws. They are your typical baddies.

The lack of fast travel combined with respawning enemies though.. It results in something quite unfortunate. That is wanting to skip the enemies if not the entirety of the whole level as you wouldn't want to waste resources (which is far more evident with the enemies like Druids who are easy to kill but doesn't drop bullets and melee is more inconvenient) and/or let them distract you from your objective. I get them wanting the map to be more vivid while also posing a threat but it still ends up being a problem. Respawning enemy patrols are fine but enemy camps should have not been respawned. On top of that, I must reiterate how easy is it to fight. You just sit on your ass and snipe everyone including those damns robots which can melt you in miliseconds if you stick to their asses but can't do ♥♥♥♥ if you stand still only a few meters away. All of a sudden the game becomes a worse Sniper Elite.

While I loved connecting the dots, the story left me cold. It’s more about the situation than emotional and moral stakes. You get snippets of lore from notes, but the characters’ motivations feel thin. There are six endings, but the finale is chaotic—mostly, once again, a mad sprint through areas you’ve already seen. It's kinda anticlimactic. The characters you’ll be in cahoots with are very stereotypical but that’s what you get with soldiers, scientists, and delusional people, eh?

Combat is serviceable. Early guns feel appropriately weak but never unfair (meaning your bullets don't travel to the fkn moon). Melee is fun but gets overwhelming as you move close to the endgame. You have your kick to stagger enemies and it does put a distance but to close that distance you'd need to play more aggressively which doesn't always work (unless you spam in cycles). Stealth is barebones and that's really it. Yup, this is one of those games where enemies have eyes on their back.

Puzzles could’ve been better, but as an action-adventure game (at the face value), it checks the right boxes. The sandbox elements give you freedom, but the RPG (there are no skill checks etc.) and survival mechanics (don't expect to feel the tension of mitigating hunger, thirst, sleep etc.) are certainly shallow, possibly hurting replay value. I don't insist on replayability but seeing Atomfall is ''done and gone'' suits better anyway.

On the plus side, it’s well-optimized, capturing rural England’s atmosphere nicely. Voice acting is neat, and the customizable difficulty is a standout feature. You can tweak combat, exploration, and survival separately, even being able to adjusting enemy behavior (aggression, accuracy, etc.). Survival settings affect loot scarcity and trading from what I was able to gather, exploration is probably the most important one as it lets you disable navigational hints, waymarks, hell, the whole compass.

Atomfall never digs deep, but it’s a solid experiment which deserves its flowers. At €50, given today’s AA pricing, it’s forgivable enough. If you’re craving a compact, choice-driven adventure with a retro-apocalyptic vibe, it’s worth a look.

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
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