It’s true! It’s been four whole years, but another Paper Mario game has been announced, and it’s coming this July!
The last Paper Mario game we got was Paper Mario: Color Splash back in October of 2016, and it hardly left a splash. Of course, many people are already angry about a game that we’ve only seen 2 minutes of very specific, hand-selected bits of the game.
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) May 14, 2020
Honestly, in my opinion, the discourse is… well, it’s dumb. Regardless, I’m absolutely in love with the art style of this game. I’ve always been one who appreciates very tacticle and artsitic, something I talked about the other day. The very physical feel of the paper- and cardboard-like textures in the game is something that appeals to me directly.
The trailer gave us some plot details, but not too many other than who the main villian is and a couple of areas that are in the game. All in all, this is a very pleasant surprise in an otherwise unpleasant time.
An alternate title for this article would be “Before We Leave – A Game Who’s Aesthetic I Shall Gush About For A Whole Article.”
(I glance around nervously.) I just put that out there so you know what this will be like…
Disclaimer: I have yet to play this game. I am using the store page and information gathered from various videos and sources like Polygon to make my judgement.
SO! What is “Before We Leave?” I’m so glad you asked! “Before We Leave” is a game made by the development studio Balancing Monkey Games that is described as a “non-violent city building gameset on multiple planets in your own cozy corner of the universe.”
Official Launch Trailer for Before We Leave
You start off very small, like most world builders, but you slowly build up your “nation” to a global scale, and then you get space flight and shoot off towards another planet.
Now that we got the basic bits out of the way, let’s talk about how that game LOOKS!
HO BOY! THIS GAME LOOKS FREAKING GREAT!
I’m sorry. Let’s take a step back, and also get some context for that outburst.
When I saw the trailer for Before We Leave, I immediately fell in love with the game.
Oh, wait. Did you want more information on Before We Leave before I gush on for, like, 40 pages on the art style?
Well, if you insist…
Remember when I mentioned that this game is a “non-violent city builder?” That’s 100% true. There are no militaries, no conflicting nation-states, and not even your own people, called Peeps, die from mismanagement. They will get unhappy, and thus be less productive, but I’m sure you’ll have the prowess as a gamer to turn those frowns upside down.
This is a game about expansion, as is typical for the genre, but the pace you do so seems to be rather fast compared to the likes of, say, Sid Meier’s Civilization, as noted by Polygon writer Nicole Carpenter:
“Though my civilization was becoming more advanced, I was leaving the world a whole lot more polluted, and it was beginning to impact my peeps. I had no choice but to build vegetable fields and houses on polluted lands. (…) And so I expanded again, hoping to find a way to fix the problem, which leveled off for a while before it got way, way worse.”
It seems as though you can become the very thing that the game warns against: a civilization so entranced by expansion and exploitation that you destroy the very worlds which give you life.
Wonderful!
Let’s now revert our focus back onto those graphics, and how good they look! I already stated that I love it when a game has a very toylike design to its artstyle, but Before We Leave takes it a bit further with its hexagonal grid.
There’s just something about this grid that really, and I mean really, sells me on that toylike aesthetic. This choice somehow makes the game feel more tactile, almost like I could recreate it in a diorama, which is something that is really appealling to me as I constantly strive to make more and more art as this pandemic rages on.
