Review | Leila - Reminiscing in the Future

I recently found myself stuck between the past and the future, far from the present. I played Ubik Studios’ Leila, struggled to review it, graduated, moved house, struggled to find work, and then returned to review the game. It only took about two hours to see the credits roll, but it took tens of hours to be able to put the words to the page. Despite how condemning that sounds, I’m glad I played Leila. It made the recent challenges that I’ve encountered in my life easier. If nothing else, I must recommend it for that.

You play as a witness to the titular character’s gamified past via a fictional headset that has transformed her consciousness into a sort of VR experience. The player enters this facsimile of the mind of Leila — who is “drifting on the shores of her life,” as the game would describe it — and solves varied but light puzzles to paint a near-complete picture of her prior experiences as you watch significant or traumatic events from within her memories alongside her. Articulated beautifully through hand-drawn art in various styles, Leila reminisces maturely on the past throughout the game, which prompted me to bring a new attitude to how I view the future.

This is the point of Leila, I think. As performed by Mandy Zine, in each moment Leila’s gentle but attention-demanding voice drags you into considering a secondary — often maturer — point of view, soothingly suggesting that you reminisce about your best and worst moments when watching Leila do the same. Leila, at her lowest, is portrayed no more or less equally than when you see her at her best. A few key moments exemplify this: when she undergoes childbirth, writes a book, fails a romantic partner, and struggles to conform to societal expectations. Throughout all points of her life that we are afforded a window into, the music is calming, the art is captivating, and the narrative frames Leila kindly. The game encourages us to adopt this perspective: that a person is made up of many emotions and experiences, and cannot be defined solely by their best or worst behavior. After my playthrough, I was compelled to look at my past sympathetically and project that way of thinking onto my future highs and lows. Every struggle I’ve had and will have is formative to me as a person, and I should be comfortable with always being the current version of myself — participating in the tough human experience — even through periods of self-loathing and criticism.

Leila eventually amplifies its voice beyond musings on the human experience to social commentary, illustrating how some common struggles — predominantly self-hate, as presented in the game — uniquely impact women. Women are more systemically challenged and susceptible to prejudice than their peers, met not only with the same life challenges but also encouraged into self-hate and guilt by their environment, therefore potentially finding the feelings more oppressive and inescapable. I cannot speak to how this message impacts someone who is already a victim of this struggle and has personally experienced it. However, I can attest that — as a man — I’m glad that the people at Ubik Studios pushed me to sympathise more with an experience that I may never know firsthand.

Thus far, I have not given much attention to the gorgeous art or music, the clean performance on my outdated laptop, or the clever and adequately challenging yet not overly difficult puzzle design. I didn’t think much about these things when playing, and I didn’t think about them again until writing this review. For some, reviews fail to accurately communicate what makes a game worth picking up, especially since glitches, framerates, or the feedback of certain inputs are rarely what remain in your memory after rolling credits on a game. What I can say is that all of Leila’s components are tightly wound and well tuned, forming a cohesive whole that’s enjoyable and never breaks immersion.

Leila got me through a hard time and taught me things in the same manner as Mountains’ Florence or Giant Sparrow’s What Remains of Edith Finch. If these games work for you, then you may be open to the message that Ubik Studios is expressing in this game.