LEAVES - The Return similar games & best alternatives

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LEAVES - The Return

PC (Microsoft Windows), Mac • 2017

Should you play it?

Mononino and the Treefruities fared well without you - until another disaster scattered the leaves of their home tree. Once more, take on the journey and challenging puzzles along the way.

What works

  • Unique handcrafted surreal art style
  • Challenging and varied puzzles
  • Calm, meditative atmosphere
  • Intriguing exploration and discovery
  • Voluntary, self-paced gameplay

Things to keep in mind

  • Tedious backtracking and navigation
  • Minimal narrative and emotional engagement
  • Short game length and limited replayability
  • Clunky ui and technical issues on some systems
  • Lack of innovation from first game

What to play next

Top picks

Games that feel the closest overall

  • LEAVES - The Journey

  • Samorost 2

  • Papetura

  • Down the Rabbit Hole Flattened

  • LostWinds

  • Tiny Echo

  • Quern - Undying Thoughts

  • COCOON

  • Ether One

Search more ->

Hidden Gems

Less popular games with surprisingly high similarity

  • Stranded In Time

  • Queen's Quest 2: Stories of Forgotten Past

  • Isoland

If you liked…

Recommendations by what you enjoyed most

  • Autonomy

    LEAVES - The Journey
  • Creativity

    LEAVES - The Journey
  • Escapism

    Samorost 2

Similarity map

Explore nearby similar games and see why they’re close.

How to use the graph

Similarity map

Each dot is a game. They are arranged from the game’s motivation profile. Closer dots usually mean more similar reasons to play (exploration, competition, relaxation, etc.)—not that one game is “better” than another.

  • Purple star: this page’s game — everything on the map is relative to it.
  • Coloured chips: click to highlight games that mainly differ on that motivation; click again to reset.
  • Dotted line: link between this page’s game and the one selected for comparison.
  • Hover a dot to preview that game in the panel on the right; click to keep that comparison.
  • Scroll or double-click the chart to zoom out and see more games.

Why don’t the axes read like a score? This view uses t-SNE: it only keeps who is close to whom. The scales are not “good to bad” or hours played—they separate groups on the map. Read distance between dots, not the axis numbers (hidden on purpose).

LEAVES - The Return: Less representative of its motivational profile, with noticeable differences. Motivations that often define this kind of title include Survival, Violence, Competition, Thrill. It leans lower than usual among comparable games on Story, Continuation, Intimacy.

Last update: 25/07/2026