![]() Leo navigates a two dimensional world filled with puzzles and traps, and it doesn't take long before they start getting pretty challenging. The floating ability was inspired by Kirby’s Dream Land for Game Boy that I played as a kid." We added the floating ability as an experimental feature that we decided to keep during prototyping. This was one of the core concepts during the design phase of the character. We always wanted the character to have the ability to expand and use that ability as a way to jump from a surface. "We prototyped different abilities and ways to control the character and finally settled on what Leo’s Fortune is today. "We started out with a physics world and a circle that could jump and move left and right," explains Johan Knutzen, one of the game's two programmer. (Lead Designer), Shahrouz Zolfaghari (Programmer), Meet the team: Karin Bruer (Artist), Anders Hejdenberg All of this is extremely well demonstrated in the tutorial. Like a puffer fish, Leo can make himself bigger, which enables him to float and avoid obstacles, or slow down his fall. You make him move to the left and right by dragging your finger on the left side of the screen, while the right side controls his up and down movement. Leo himself is a beautifully rendered ball of blue/green fur - with a large moustache and an Eastern European accent. The thief has left a trail of coins like breadcrumbs to tease him into finding his hoard again, and thus begins the premise of this original game from 1337 & Senri. Of the many factors that go into a good platforming game, charm is often assumed but never mentioned.Leo's gold has gone missing. It can come from being instantly likeable, like Mario or Rayman. As long as it isn't overdone, a bit of attitude can go a long way, such as with Sonic and Crash Bandicoot. Characters like Meat Boy are also charming due to their never-quit attitude when faced with the most heinous of challenges. Leo, the lead character from Leo's Fortune, has that charm, but it helps that the rest of the game holds up as well. ![]() Leo is a world-renowned engineer who makes his fortune from many mechanical endeavors. Unfortunately, he wakes up one morning to see that his fortune is all gone. He discovers that whoever stole the gold is leaving bits of it behind, almost like a breadcrumb trail. He also has his suspicions that one of his three relatives, all of whom have lost their fortunes at some point, may have been the culprit. After leaving a note for his wife about his journey, Leo set out to retrieve his gold. ![]() The standard adventure story is made rather quaint thanks to Leo's narration and observations. Speaking with a very noticeable Eastern European accent, he has a pretty calm outlook on the situation. Given the circumstances, his accusations aren't as biting as expected, and his reaction to the truth doesn't elicit much outrage. It isn't the reaction of someone who is bored or apathetic but of someone who seems to accept things that occur rather than being outraged when things don't go his way. ![]() It is during the actual levels where the worldly Leo's charm comes out. Getting over difficult tasks is met with an exclamation of success, he urges himself to hurry up, and he ponders the difficulty of a puzzle when faced with the challenge. One can't help but smile when hearing these minor touches. Leo's Fortune is a physics-based platformer that is light on enemy interactions. Don't expect to see any minions or bosses roaming around on the 20 levels you go through. Whether you're in desert ruins or caves in the woods or rainy port villages, you have to get from one platform to another until you make it to the end of the level, and the only dangers you face are pits and spiked objects that litter the screen. For the most part, you'll jump from ledge to ledge, sometimes using momentum to push a chained platform or move a box to hit a switch, but you will encounter lots of slopes and loops along the way in addition to springs that bounce you from place to place. In that sense, Leo almost feels like Sonic the Hedgehog, only reimagined as a small ball of fur with big eyes and a moustache. ![]() Though he can be speedy when running at full tilt, he's a pretty average platforming hero with the exception of two special abilities in his arsenal. The first is the ability to compress himself, which is usually done as a diving slam. ![]()
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