Before We Leave Review – a Unique Take on a Saturated Genre

Before We Leave is one of the most chilled-out games I have ever played. With its hexagonal building design and emphasis on relaxing gameplay, I can happily sink into a comfy seat and mindlessly build my city for hours.

As with many city builder games, you can speed up or slow down time, so you can go at your own pace. If you want to blitz through the rather simple tech tree, you can do it. But there is honestly no need to, as there is no emphasis on time. It somehow reminds me of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Everything can be done at your own pace, without penalty for going too quickly or slowly.

The graphics are a little cartoonish, but in a good way. For some reason, every time I see one of my townsfolk I think of Terrance and Phillip from South Park.

One minute I can be looking at the game, wishing there was a little bit more detail, and the next minute I find myself looking at my town with the sun setting in the background, thinking it looks amazing.

What Makes Before We Leave Stand Out?

Steam is saturated with city builders, from popular giants such as Cities: Skylines to one-man-band games such as Kingdoms Reborn. While they seem to be hit or miss, in honesty, not many of them are unique enough to stand out from the crowd.

If you’re playing the latter, our Kingdoms Reborn starting location guide can help you get your first settlement off to a decent start.

Before We Leave is a very unique city builder. Firstly, its core gameplay is so simple that it actually works in its favor. It hasn’t tried to reinvent the wheel, it has simply given us a solid, fun, but chilled-out game.

You can, of course, work on improving logistics, placing better paths to make sure supplies get around quicker, but in honesty, it’s not going to affect you too much if you don’t.

Before We Leave Threats and Dangers

One of the other things that makes Before We Leave so different is the lack of traditional threats. There are no opposing armies or neighboring civilizations trying to destroy everything you’ve built. The entire game is chilled, with very few worries or threats compared with most city builders.

Apart from ancient guardians, including a giant world-eating Space Whale, you have very little to concern yourself about. Your main job is rebuilding the world after the fall of civilization, using the environment around you to collect resources and rebuild.

If that all sounds far too peaceful, our Age of Darkness: Final Stand review covers a city builder that takes almost the exact opposite approach and throws thousands of monsters at your walls instead.

Exploring

Much of the game’s premise involves exploring, building ships and finding other islands, as well as rebuilding spaceships to explore other planets and continue off-world expansion.

Each island or map has its own set of unique environments, meaning that certain buildings, such as the Orchard, can work in one environment but not another. So in some cases, you might struggle with resources until you’ve managed to secure more land.

Shipping Lanes

With multiple islands and planets, micromanagement becomes pretty tough in Before We Leave, but thankfully, you can build shipping lanes, which will help you move your goods around from one island to another.

When you finally make the first big step for mankind and start to colonize another planet, you can also create space shipping lanes too, allowing you to move goods from your islands on one planet to another.

If you thought resource management was tough on your everyday RTS, you’ve not seen anything until you’ve tried resource management across multiple islands on multiple planets. That’s a real challenge, and the main one in Before We Leave.

When setting up shipping lanes, players can choose between manually sending goods or setting up permanent lanes, which can carry multiple items between islands.

You can set a target limit for the number of goods to be shipped, or simply leave it as an infinite amount. With each island having its own environment, it makes sense to have each island prioritize certain goods and simply ship them around between your islands.

Before We Leave also includes Smart Shipping, which can automate some of this process by helping move resources between settlements based on how much of each resource an island needs. This is particularly useful once your civilization starts spreading across multiple islands and planets.

Before We Leave Review: Final Thoughts

While Before We Leave is simple on paper, as you progress in the game, resource management, keeping several islands and planets running smoothly, and keeping your Peeps happy becomes a tough challenge.

In fact, before starting the Before We Leave review, I had seen there were no traditional armies, no aggressive civilizations to fight, and that we would be playing entirely alone in this expandable universe. With this in mind, I had low expectations, which I was overjoyed to see were exceeded by an outstanding game.

It’s fantastic watching your islands build up, from your first island with a few Peeps popping up out of their bunker, all the way up to an intergalactic trade hub bustling with life.

Before We Leave is the perfect game to unwind to. Even though it’s a chilled-out game, there are still challenges that make it more interesting, but often with these games we see challenges that honestly become more of an annoyance than fun. I didn’t find that to be the case with Before We Leave.

If you haven’t already figured it out from my Before We Leave review, I absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys city builders but wants something a little more relaxed.

Our VerdictGame Review

Before We Leave

Before we leave is an ultra-chilled city builder where players must manage multiple islands and planets after years of sheltering in a post-apocalyptic world.

Reviewed on

PC

Time played

8 Hours

Version / build

Release

• Graphics6
• Audio6.5
• Replayability8.5
• Gameplay7.5

The Good

• Chilled gameplay
• Detailed Resource Management
• Unique Hexagon Gameplay

The Bad (& Ugly)

• Graphics Could be Better

7.1/ 10

Unboxed Reviews Score

Reviewed byKegan Mooney

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