Video Game Review: Before We Leave

Developer: & Publisher: Balancing Monkey Games

Genre: Strategy

Reviewed For: Nintendo Switch

Also Available On: PlayStation, Xbox, PC

While there are many city and civilization building games on the Nintendo Switch, there aren’t enough cozy games in the genre. Before We Leave is a respectable attempt at amending this, giving players a colorful world with a presentation that could be confused for a nice board game. 

So I called Before We Leave, but in reality, the main premise isn’t all that cozy. It’s a post-apocalyptic game in which players help a group of people who have been bunkered underground since the end of the world. Now that they have deemed the world safe again, it’s time to colonize their home planet, and eventually others again. 

Still, despite the premise, it’s not misleading to call Before We Leave cozy. The experience as a whole is relaxing, and the presentation makes it easy to disarm players. There aren’t significant disasters that players need to be on the lookout for in Before We Leave. No, players will simply manage resources, build cool things, and eventually make their planet uninhabitable again and fly off to another planet to do it all over again. 

Despite the disconnect between the narrative’s tone and the gameplay, Before We Leave works quite well. Anyone at all familiar with the genre will be at home while building homes to boost the population, farms for food, and other structures for resources. Players will balance economics with quality of life. There actually isn’t all that much to the gameplay loop, and for some, that will be okay. 

For others, the lack of any real challenge or tension will make Before We Leave quite short. The gameplay loop isn’t deep, and after a few planets, players might find themselves bored. There isn’t a noteworthy narrative or sense of progression, so there isn’t much reason to play after players realize that Before We Leave can be quite stale. 

Playing on handhold mode on the Nintendo Switch can feel a little frustrating due to the small text and obstructive UI. The world of Before We Leave looks nice with soft colors, but the menus do not. It’s not the easiest to play simply because the game can’t get out of its own way when it comes to menus. After a few hours the loop might feel okay, but Before We Leave simply isn’t intuitive.

Before We Leave should have a lot going for it, but instead, it finds itself in a forgettable position. There are much better city-building games available that offer a real challenge. Still, Before We Leave is accessible to beginners and there is certainly value in that.