A fluffy green ball with a mustache is the eponymous hero in Leo’s Fortune. Sadly, he’s just lost his riches and must now traverse his way across a series of platforms, solving puzzles along the way in order to progress and eventually reunite with his gold.
Controlling Leo is taken care of with onscreen swipe gestures. To move Leo left and right you swipe on the left-hand side of the screen, while to make him jump you swipe up on the right-hand side of the screen. Leo jumps by inflating, causing him to float, which comes in handy with some of the puzzles you face. Across most of the levels you’ll be tasked with avoiding spikes, spinning saw blades, and constantly moving obstacles in order to progress.
The game starts out simply enough with some basic levels to get you used to the controls but the difficulty soon ramps up. By level five its a struggle to make it through in one sitting, often having to close the app and come back later when frustration has subsided. With only 20 levels, you may think this will be a short affair, but each will seriously test your reactions and ability to control Leo, who can often be a pain in the backside.
Level Design
While Leo generally reacts to your swipes as you’d expect, he sometimes gets confused due to the way the levels are designed. At some sections you will send Leo up a U-turn, thus reversing his direction across the screen. However, instead of also changing the direction of your thumb half-way through the bend, you have to keep your thumb heading in the opposite direction until Leo has made his way to the next platform. It can cause a bit of a disconnect that you have to get used to across the game.
The levels are split across five acts, which all have distinct styles and backgrounds which, alongside the lush graphical display, gives the world real depth. Each area is also preceded by a black-and-white cinematic that’s shown through old-style theater curtains with a voiceover that relays Leo’s story to you.
Despite some tricky control issues, Leo’s Fortune is an immensely playable platform game and one you’ll get drawn into and want to play through to the end. While it may not include a huge number of levels, it’s well worth the $4.99/£2.99 and truly feels like a console quality game.