Fallen Leaf (PC) - Review

  

For many, the simplistic aesthetics of a retro-themed game can be quite inviting - whether it be the nostalgic 8-bit color palette, character designs, or even the chiptune music that often accompanies them. Fallen Leaf is a newly-released, retro-inspired title that successfully captures the look and feel of games from the past. While certainly not perfect, overall it's a worthwhile title.

  

The presentation is very well done. It seemingly limits itself to the original Nintendo Entertainment System's color palette while avoiding any flicker or slowdown, which is a relief. The major cutscenes, such as the one in the introduction, use large cinematic sprites to present the game's overall simplistic story: Leaf, a treasure hunter, has accidentally released a dark emperor named Xankulos from his imprisonment and must form new alliances, travel the world to become stronger, and seal Xankulos away once more.

  

  

In spite of how well Fallen Leaf presents itself, playing in the game’s neutral state - without special abilities or power-ups - is very frustrating. While this can of course be mitigated by gaining new abilities as you progress, it ideally shouldn’t take two hours or more for characters to get into a fun, functional state. In contrast with something like Mega Man, where I'll often avoid power-ups, Fallen Leaf makes it feel necessary to acquire them just to find basic enjoyment. It would undoubtedly benefit from higher baseline character stats. There are at least temporary power-up items that last until you take damage within each level, taking the form of a magic gauntlet that increases damage output. For the titular character Leaf, this enhances the speed, power, and range of his primary attack, for instance.

  

Leaf has a wind-up animation for his primary attack, but you can't buffer your left or right button presses to change your facing-direction, meaning you'll miss many projectiles as your back will be facing the intended target. This also applies to the double jump (an ability you don’t initially possess when starting the game), which means you'll often miss enemies if you use the double jump to avoid their attacks. You can also slide by pressing down and jump, but pressing the jump button again in quick succession will cancel the dash with a vertical jump. Another drawback is that your primary attack doesn't travel the full screen, moves slowly, and cannot pass through walls or stage geometry. If you're coming from other 2D action platformers without these quirks then Fallen Leaf requires significant adaptation to get used to how it functions.

  

  

Much of the game’s level design and platforming mechanics are straightforward, but many levels rely on cheap surprises, causing you to fall victim to them once or twice as you learn the patterns. Some sections may require you to repeat the same area multiple times and, coupled with how the game controls, this can be very frustrating to deal with. There are even pits which are indicated as being safe to travel with gems; however, some dead-end pitfalls are laced with gems as well, enticing you to jump to your death. Personally, I'm not a fan of pits where you fall to your death in these types of games, but especially not in Fallen Leaf, which has no game-overs. Instead, you're sent back to the previous checkpoint upon death, which is great – extra lives and a continue-screen honestly have little place in a game like this either.

  

As you progress through Fallen Leaf, you'll unlock additional characters with unique abilities and attack ranges. One character, Pawla, is a short-ranged melee fighter who has an auto-attack on her double jump, making her a nice, varied alternative to Leaf. Not only this, but you'll collect special weapons which are tied to a resource meter. So even though there are some missteps with the game's controls, there is still room for expression in how you choose to play.

  

  

There are also several quality-of-life features that alleviate some potential frustrations. Much of the text is skippable, allowing you to get back into the action more quickly if you wish to skip over the text. You can also deactivate unlocked characters and special weapons from the pause menu, which is useful for avoiding cycling through options you don’t intend to use. This is great, as you can swap your character and special weapon at any time using the shoulder buttons. Should you want to re-enable a feature, you're welcome to do so from the pause menu as and when necessary.

  

However, there is still one final criticism I have of Fallen Leaf. Outside of the title screen, all of the music sounds pretty flat and forgettable. The chiptune jingles themselves sound as though they don't have enough channels provided to produce good music; practically every theme feels like it's missing something. I couldn't tell you how accurate it sounds in relation to the NES (I haven't played on an actual physical NES in almost 30 years), but I'm aware that other retro-inspired titles, like Mega Man 9 and 10, had a unique sound to them as well, and I'd assume that's the case for Fallen Leaf, however the Mega Man titles had good music underpinning them.

  

  

All things considered, Fallen Leaf is a decent game. It starts off rocky, but improving the baseline stats of your characters really aids Fallen Leaf in becoming much more enjoyable - to such an extent that, in spite of some quirks and irritations, it will remain in my retro-title rotation for quite some time.