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'To Leave' flying to PlayStation, hopes to put Latin American games on the map
Mechanically, To Leave is a very simple game, requiring players to hop from one safe location to another, avoiding hazards along the way. What elevates it beyond those mechanics, at least in my very brief experience with it, is its bold art style and soundscape. A simple platformer becomes the story of a young man escaping from the misery of his life, desperately clinging to a door as it flies through a bizarre dream world. There's no telling if that will be enough to carry a full game, but it makes for a very good first impression (watch the trailer if you haven't already). For Estefano Palacios, To Leave is much more than the sum of its parts. Palacios is creative director of Ecuadorian studio Freaky Creations and, for him, To Leave is a shot at earning respect for Latin American games and developers. To Leave is headed to PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4 as part of an incubation program that Sony instituted to court Latin American developers. Palacios believes – and Sony agrees, it would seem – that the region deserves more recognition. Speaking with Joystiq at GDC, Sony account manager Mike Foster, who is in charge of the incubation program, tells me it came to be in 2007. A member of Sony's developer support group, who happens to be Guatemalan, wanted to "explore the developer landscape in Latin America," says Foster, "because nobody really knows what's going on down there. It's quiet."
