Before We Leave

Before We Leave on PC is a peaceful city-building and resource-management game with light 4X structure, a top-down camera, and a distinctive hexagonal world. Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG continue to list the game under the original name, with no verified rebrand, definitive-edition rename, or replacement storefront title. You guide the underground survivors known as Peeps as they rebuild settlements, research lost technology, and expand from islands to other planets.

Build a civilisation across hexagonal worlds

The central loop begins with a small settlement and a limited supply chain. Peeps emerge knowing how to grow potatoes, so your first priorities are housing, food production, storage, and the basic facilities needed to keep the population working. Every building must fit the game's hex-grid placement, making land use and settlement layout important from the beginning.

Before We Leave uses a top-down perspective that lets you rotate and zoom around spherical planets, inspect individual islands, and move between local construction and a wider planetary view. Expansion is not simply about covering every available tile. You need to preserve productive land, connect buildings sensibly, and leave room for later upgrades and infrastructure.

Its economic model is more deliberate than a purely decorative city builder. Resources move through connected production chains, while transport between islands can take place by sea. Once space travel becomes available, interplanetary trade lets settlements exchange goods and research materials across the solar system.

Players who prefer a harsher settlement-management loop may find a useful comparison in survival-focused city builders such as Banished, but Before We Leave removes combat and reduces the emphasis on catastrophic survival. Its pressure comes from planning, logistics, pollution, and long-term expansion.

Research, happiness, and environmental pressure

Research provides the game's main progression system. Your civilisation uncovers ancient technologies that unlock new buildings, production methods, transport options, and wider capabilities such as sailing, industry, and trade. The technology path gradually changes the scale of the settlement, taking the player from basic agriculture toward a network of functioning colonies.

Research is not an isolated menu exercise. New technologies create new demands for materials, power, workforce, and space. A building that solves one shortage may introduce another, so efficient progress depends on maintaining balanced production instead of rushing toward every available upgrade.

Peep happiness is a practical management statistic rather than a cosmetic detail. Food variety, clothing, services, pollution, and the quality of the surrounding settlement all affect how well the population functions. Keeping people satisfied improves the stability of the economy, while an unhappy population can make expansion feel slower and less reliable.

Pollution management gives industrial growth a visible cost. Factories and other productive structures can damage the environment around them, reducing the quality of nearby land and affecting settlement performance. Forests, cleaners, careful zoning, and more considered placement provide ways to limit the damage, but pollution remains one of the game's important tradeoffs.

Exploration without conventional warfare

Before We Leave is unusual among 4X-influenced city builders because it does not use armies, rival empires, conquest, or battles over territory. There are no weapons and no conventional military campaign. Expansion is driven by exploration, research, resource access, and the creation of a sustainable network between settlements.

The world is divided into six distinct biomes, each with different terrain and resource characteristics. Island shape matters because the available building area can be constrained, while fertile land and specialized materials may encourage you to establish more than one settlement on the same planet.

Exploration reveals ruins, resources, and opportunities that are not immediately available from the starting settlement. This creates a steady rhythm: stabilize the home island, investigate nearby land, unlock the technology needed to travel farther, then establish another colony with a more specialized role.

Space travel changes the scale of the game without abandoning the original city-building logic. Each new planet introduces another set of islands, production concerns, and environmental conditions to manage. The challenge is coordinating several settlements while ensuring that the original colony remains productive rather than treating each new world as an isolated start.

Space whales and non-violent threats

The main external threat comes from ancient guardians and enormous space whales that can interfere with your settlements. These encounters do not turn the game into a combat strategy title. Instead, they create defensive and logistical problems that must be handled through preparation, infrastructure, research, and avoidance.

Space-whale attacks are important because they interrupt the otherwise calm expansion loop. A player who focuses only on production may eventually discover that protection, power, and warning systems are just as important as food or housing. The result is tension without the usual military escalation found in many space-themed strategy games.

This design makes Before We Leave a strong fit for players who want a peaceful strategy game but still expect meaningful obstacles. It is not completely consequence-free, however. Poor planning can create shortages, pollution, falling happiness, and vulnerable colonies even when no rival faction is attacking you.

What is included on PC?

The standard PC release is a paid single-player game. The Steam listing also offers a Deluxe Edition containing the base game and the official soundtrack, while the soundtrack is listed separately as the only additional downloadable product shown on the current Steam page. There is no verified season pass or large catalogue of gameplay expansions that needs to be separated from the base experience.

The storefront versions share the same core identity: city building, research, resource management, exploration, and protection from the game's non-human threats. GOG additionally lists a Standard Edition and a Deluxe Edition, with the Deluxe package adding soundtrack files rather than a separate gameplay campaign.

That distinction matters for buyers searching for a complete edition. The meaningful choice is generally between the base game and a soundtrack-including Deluxe package, not between multiple gameplay tiers with different settlement systems or planet content.

PC players looking for a more explicitly hostile science-fiction colony simulator can compare the logistics-heavy structure of space colony management games like Planetbase. Planetbase puts greater emphasis on life-support survival, whereas Before We Leave is more focused on civilisation growth and inter-island trade.

PC features, input, and localisation

On Steam, Before We Leave is listed as single-player and includes Steam Achievements and Family Sharing. The store page lists 56 achievements, giving completion-focused players a set of goals beyond simply reaching the later research and space systems.

The Steam listing does not advertise a full controller-support badge, so keyboard and mouse should be treated as the safest primary input choice on PC. Controller users may be able to use platform-level remapping, but the storefront information does not establish a dedicated, fully supported PC gamepad interface.

GOG lists the game as DRM-free, with no activation or online connection required to play that version. Steam and Epic provide the normal storefront-integrated PC releases, while the game's single-player design means there is no requirement for online matchmaking, dedicated servers, or co-op hosting.

Text localisation covers English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Turkish, and Japanese on the current Steam listing. Full audio is not advertised for these languages, so players should expect a text-localised experience rather than a broadly voiced production.

Who should play Before We Leave?

Before We Leave suits players who enjoy watching a settlement evolve through resource chains, research, and incremental infrastructure improvements. It is especially appealing if you want a city builder that allows expansion across multiple worlds without making combat the centre of the experience.

The game is also a good choice for players who like readable systems and a calmer presentation. Its clean visual language makes it easy to understand the relationship between islands, buildings, resources, and population needs once the economy becomes more complex.

It may be a poor fit if you want aggressive competition, military conquest, deep character stories, or a multiplayer city-building mode. Before We Leave is strictly a solo management experience, and its later stages ask you to maintain several connected settlements rather than control individual units in real-time battles.

Players mainly interested in relaxing tile placement rather than production management may prefer quiet hex-based landscape building in the style of Dorfromantik. Before We Leave uses a similarly approachable hex presentation, but its focus is on population, industry, research, and interplanetary logistics.

Before We Leave FAQ

Is Before We Leave still sold under its original name?

Yes. Current Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG listings use Before We Leave. No verified rebrand, renamed definitive edition, or replacement PC title has been identified.

Is Before We Leave multiplayer or co-op?

No. The PC version is listed as single-player. It does not provide online multiplayer, split-screen co-op, or a shared settlement mode.

Does Before We Leave have combat?

No conventional combat system is present. There are no player-controlled weapons or battles against neighbouring civilisations. Threats such as guardians and space whales must be handled through planning, protection, and avoidance.

What is the main objective in Before We Leave?

The practical objective is to rebuild civilisation from a small settlement, research lost technology, establish additional colonies, connect islands and planets through trade, and protect the Peeps while your society expands.

What does the Deluxe Edition contain?

The Deluxe Edition includes the base game and the official soundtrack. The current storefront listings do not show a separate Deluxe gameplay campaign or a large collection of paid gameplay expansions.

Does Before We Leave support controllers on PC?

The Steam page does not advertise full controller support, so keyboard and mouse remain the most clearly supported PC input method. Steam Input or other remapping may help, but controller behaviour should not be treated as equivalent to a native console-style interface.