Paper Trail [Review]
Puzzler Paper Trail will charm you with its handcrafted style and then work out your brain with its folding mechanics.
Paper Trail. Credit: Newfangled Games
While Newfangled Games’ Paper Trail isn’t the first puzzle game I’ve seen with a paper folding mechanic, it pushes the concept much further and in more creative ways. The game is also beautiful to behold, with a flawless presentation of its 2D world in a gorgeous, paper textured, flat painted style that imbues the game with a feeling of magic whenever you fold one of its pages.
In Paper Trail, Paige wishes to go to university. Her family won’t let her go, for reasons we’ll learn over the course of the game, so she decides to run away. The game is Paige’s journey; you’ll help her use her unique ability to fold space to get to school and fulfill her dream.
Paper Trail. Credit: Newfangled Games
Paige can walk, push objects, and activate switches. From outside the world, you’re able to fold every page from an edge or a corner and drag it over any distance. Folding the paper is like folding space, so Paige can walk onto the backside of the paper that’s revealed when you fold if you create a new path. There are some limits to Paige’s power; you can’t fold the world over her, you can’t unfold it if she’s standing on the folded section, and you can’t fold the paper over a fold that you’ve already created.
Navigating the puzzles involves folding and unfolding the world in different configurations to create paths for Paige to progress, while sometimes moving other objects such as stones and moving platforms across folded areas as well. Each area that Paige visits has a unique theme—cave, lagoon, ruins, and more—and introduces new wrinkles to the game’s basic folding mechanic to keep things fresh. You’ll find rotating platforms, lava circuits, portal doors, and more.
Paper Trail. Credit: Newfangled Games
By the end the game’s puzzles get complex. Rooms can be made of oddly shaped or multiple pages while also containing an increasing number of moving parts to track. The puzzles require a good bit of spatial awareness and planning ahead; you definitely need to be prepared to enter that headspace. I appreciated that the game never penalized me for resorting to trial and error. Paper Trail has a hint system, where you can see each fold in sequence for the solution to the current puzzle, so you can look ahead only the number of steps you need to get you unstuck. Still, it doesn’t do all the work for you, because you still need to figure out where to guide Paige and how to handle the rest of a room’s moving parts.
Paper Trail. Credit: Newfangled Games
The art direction of Paper Trail fits the game’s conceit perfectly. The levels are made of paper, illustrated with beautifully layers watercolor; characters are made of solid shapes, making them look like paper cutouts. All of it exists over a black wooden panel. It all makes the game very tactile, with the help of some great sound design. Folding the paper just feels great.
I will admit that by the end of the game I felt a bit worn out. I think the negative here is that the game is very linear, when I compare it to the last two puzzle games I reviewed. Star Stuff alleviates the problem of burnout by letting you skip some puzzles, while Isles of Sea and Sky approaches the problem differently because of its open world, simply letting you walk away from a puzzle to try a different one elsewhere. I also think those two games do a better job modulating the difficulty curve with some valleys to create little mental breaks.
Paper Trail. Credit: Newfangled Games
Even with that flaw, Paper Trail is a wonderful puzzle game that does a great job giving its mechanics and gameplay a feeling of magic. Going with Paige on her whimsical journey is an experience I’d recommend to anyone who loves a good puzzle.
Paper Trail is available now on PC (Steam), Xbox One / Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PS4 / PS5, and via Netflix games on iOS and Android.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: PS5
