She’s Leaving Review — Blood Splatter

When I got the email offering me the chance to review She’s Leaving, with the pitch being to “channel your inner Dexter,” I knew I couldn’t pass it up.

She’s Leaving is an atmospheric horror puzzle game akin to Resident Evil and in the style of other indie horror titles, in the sense that it mostly involves exploring a creepy environment and gradually solving puzzles as you progress through the narrative.

As you might have guessed from the introduction to this review, the series Dexter is cited as one of the main inspirations for She’s Leaving. This does not mean that you play as a vaguely anti-heroic serial killer, as some of you might guess from the phrase channel your inner Dexter, but rather that the game uses the science of blood spatter analysis as one of its main mechanics, a science that was popularized by the long-running television drama.

If you have never heard of it, then chances are all of the Dexter references I have made so far have gone over your head. I am going to keep making them because it is not every review where I get to. In that case, it is worth mentioning that blood spatter is the science of identifying the source of blood stains, in which you can tell a surprising amount of information on how a blood stain got where it is based on its shape. This science is often used alongside other forensic sciences to identify how a crime happened and thus identify its culprit.

In She’s Leaving, you play as a blood spatter analyst seeking to solve the disappearances of multiple people in Haywood, a tourist attraction built in the remains of a Tudor era mansion in England. Because our protagonist is, and I will say it again, a blood spatter analyst, he uses this particular forensic science to solve the case. As he says, blood tells a story, and each stain you find helps piece together what happened.

I was initially very excited for this mechanic, and blood spatter was a career I was interested in pursuing when I was younger. In-game, you are tasked with finding blood stains throughout the house using a UV light and correctly tagging their origin.

Unfortunately, this mechanic starts to lose its magic over time when you realize the different types of blood stains are all essentially identical to the rest in their category. The investigative side of me was also disappointed to learn that every blood stain was marked by a visible crack in the wall, so you did not actually have to search very hard to find them. There being no consequence for a misidentified stain, besides a movement speed reduction, also made that same detective brain feel disenchanted with the mechanic, which becomes repetitive over the course of the game.

The game’s environments are stunning and full of suspense and atmosphere. The concept of having the game take place in what is essentially a tourist attraction is a very unique choice for a horror game. Navigating the manor’s halls and corridors reminded me of my real-life visit to the Winchester Mystery House, and I wonder why nobody has made a game about that, as far as I am aware.

What adds to the terror is the fact that the game uses a pursuer-type villain, a killer whom you can constantly hear throughout the house and who will track you down and kill you if given the chance.

Encountering this killer is initially terrifying, especially because you have no means of defending yourself outside of a taser with limited ammunition that only stuns him and must be conserved so that you can unlock future puzzles.

Unfortunately, the terror of being caught by this pursuing villain is undone by the fact that there are no death animations. When this killer catches you, he simply walks up to you until the two of you touch and then you die with a game over screen. While your partner screaming on the microphone adds to the tension, I promise that after one or two deaths you will lose suspense with this interaction and he will start to feel more like a nuisance.

She’s Leaving is an ambitious game with some very cool ideas. The implementation of blood spatter forensics is a unique touch, and its setting is incredibly cool and highly atmospheric. Unfortunately, I think it is a game that falls off the more you play it. Its mechanics become repetitive and lose much of their charm when you realize the limits of their implementation, and being chased by the killer loses its terror when, again, you encounter the limits of his implementation.

It feels like the developers could have gone a step further in nearly every direction in this game, and She’s Leaving would have been far stronger because of it. As it stands now, it is not a bad game by any means, but one that I think loses much of its charm after about an hour, or if you do not play incredibly cautiously from the start.

That being said, it is still a title worth checking out for its story, and the unique mechanics, while not pushed quite as far as I wish they were, still make for something interesting to play.

As far as bugs go, I experienced great performance throughout, except for a rare issue where audio would load late when I entered the manor for the first time or tabbed out during a cutscene. Nothing serious enough to ruin the experience or prevent progress.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of She’s Leaving. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! She’s Leaving is available on Steam and PlayStation.