''Before We Leave'' is a city-building video game developed by Balancing Monkey Games and released by

Team 17 Team 17 Digital Limited (Team17) is a British video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Wakefield, England. The venture was created in December 1990 through the merger of British publisher 17-Bit Software and Swedish dev ...

Gameplay

''Before We Leave'' is a non-violent city-building game with elements of 4X gameplay. Players control a group of people, called Peeps, who leave a bunker. After exploring the area, players guide the Peeps as they rebuild on the ruins of a fallen civilization. Maintaining happiness levels by providing for the Peeps' needs increases their efficiency, decreasing the amount of time required for actions taken. The game's ultimate goal is for the Peeps to build up their society enough to launch themselves into space and colonize other planets. To do this, the Peeps must contend with space whales.

Development

Developer Sam Barham previously worked in the New Zealand software industry on educational tools. When one of his games competed in a fundraising competition run by the New Zealand Game Developers Association, it attracted funding from an investor, which Barham used to hire a team. In 2019, Barham transitioned into working on the game full time. The game is not strictly non-violent; players pointed out that the space whales could be considered violent. Barham did not intend for the game to be a comment on violence in video games, but he wanted to use his game as a vehicle for social change. The game was released exclusively on the Epic Game Store in May 2020 with 50 000 sales by December 2020, and was released on Steam on 14 May 2021. It was released on the Xbox Series X and S and Xbox One in November 2021, on the PlayStation 4 and 5 in April 2022, and on the Nintendo Switch in August 2022.

Reception

''Before We Leave'' received mixed reviews on

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. Ian Evenden of ''

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'' called it a "cute little city-builder with big ambitions". Nicole Carpenter of ''

Polygon In geometry, a polygon () is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain. The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its '' edges'' or ''sides''. The points where two edges meet are the polygon ...

'' said the game was initially relaxing and fun but became increasingly stressful, for both her and the Peeps, as expansion caused pollution and unhappiness in the Peeps' society.

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.balancingmonkeygames.com/before-we-leave 4X video games City-building games Video games developed in New Zealand Video games set on fictional planets Single-player video games Indie games Windows games Xbox One games Xbox Series X and Series S games PlayStation 4 games PlayStation 5 games Nintendo Switch games 2020 video games