Leila Review — All the Selves We Can’t Be

Dear developers of Leila,

I was not properly prepared for the emotions I would end up feeling going into your game. Therefore, I am holding you responsible for the state of utter devastation I’m in, and you will be hearing from my lawyers shortly.

All jokes aside, Leila is an incredibly heartwarming and equally heart-wrenching story of a woman’s life told through a collection of puzzles that are as stimulating with their challenge as they are powerful in their visual metaphor. Although Leila is full of moments that will bring a genuine smile to your face, the game has just as many moments that challenge you with retrospection on your own life and hit you at the core of who you are, with emotional moments that are shockingly real and incredibly powerful. It’s a game that actually made me cry, something I do not admit lightly and a kind of emotion I feel very rarely with media in general. It is, therefore, one of my new favorite pieces of storytelling and is a game that I’m sure will get you in your feels just like it got me.

Leila is a narrative puzzle game about Leila Ada, an author who is sharing her life and memories with you through a special new video game that physically displays your mind for others to see.

These memories hit so hard and close to home that I have to believe they are at least in some way based on reality. The developers on the game’s Steam page describe the narrative in Leila by saying, “As you delve deeper into her psyche and her emotional landscape, you’ll discover facets of your own self mirrored in the life journey of this seemingly ordinary woman.”

Holy moly, is this true. It wasn’t until around the second of four chapters that I started to really feel what the game was saying, but when I did, the parallels to my own, bordering-on-30 life were hard to ignore.

One segment in particular hit me harder than others. As our titular protagonist lies in a pool of water, she reminisces on the challenges of adulthood, particularly in “growing up” and deciding who it is you want to be. This moment offers commentary and insight into how hard this decision is to make, noting how it is both impossible to be everything you want to be and almost equally impossible to decide on just one path—or at least one main direction to take your life. The game then hits us with this line, which, as a writer, especially stood out to me:

“Should I become a writer for the sake of all the selves I can’t be?”

Yeah, that really got me. That part made me tear up and cry a little bit, which was not helped by the incredible emotional segments that followed.

The game’s writing and visuals are, by far, the main selling point. Leila will hit you with some incredibly deep, introspective lines of dialogue and follow them up with some of the best visual symbolism I’ve seen in gaming. The visuals are, of course, not just good because of their symbolism but are hand-drawn in a beautiful, anime-adjacent 2D style that is never hard to look at.

One such segment, involving the idea of the “masks” or “false faces” we wear around others, includes some incredible use of body horror that I was not at all expecting from a game like this. I’m ashamed to say how hard Leila’s entire teenage memory segment hit me. It’s not that this part was any more emotional than the rest, but holy moly, if these aren’t feelings most, if not all, of us have experienced.

While the message is certainly the main point of Leila, that isn’t to say the game suffers from a lack of focus or effort in its gameplay. The point-and-click adventure style of the game is pretty fitting for what it is, and the puzzles you have to solve are far from symbolism bereft of challenge. Each puzzle, of which the game’s four chapters have about a handful, is different in what it asks of the player and is pretty cleverly designed without feeling overwhelmingly hard. They will take you some time to figure out and will leave you feeling mentally stimulated as you solve them, but you won’t have to look up any guides to solve them.

I did face one bug while playing Leila, and it came during the game’s third chapter while assembling a robot, a metaphor I believe for growing up and figuring ourselves out. In one puzzle, you have to reassemble broken pieces by dragging and rotating them. Doing so occasionally made it so I wasn’t able to put the puzzle piece back down, essentially locking me out of completing the puzzle. This was far from a hard lock, however, as the solution to fix this bug was just going back to the previous screen via clicking a button and trying the segment again. It was a bit frustrating that it happened multiple times, though.

Leila is an incredible game, one that will stimulate your mind and tug on your heartstrings as it explores the life of a seemingly regular woman and reminds you of your own in the process. A fantastic little game that one can complete in a single, emotional afternoon, I highly recommend Leila both to puzzle game enthusiasts and people who find themselves intrigued by the game’s narrative.

TryHardGuides was provided a PC review code for Leila. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Leila is available on Steam, GoG, and PlayStation.