Folding Time, Bending Space
HIGH Beautiful soundtrack. A fresh spin on the puzzle genre.
LOW Countless components to puzzles can make completion a bit tedious.
WTF The NPC dialogue is wild.
I’m not usually one to dabble in the puzzle genre. I’m not great at them, and they remind me a bit too much of educational tasks that were forced upon me in my youth. That being said, I decided to try my luck with Paper Trail and was pleasantly surprised. Its innovative use of paper folding as a mechanic is a fresh take on the puzzle genre, making for a unique gameplay experience.
Paper Trail is a puzzle-driven adventure game about Paige, a young girl who is dead set on going to university despite her family’s wishes to keep her from leaving their little town of Southfold. A budding astrophysicist who likes to “bend the space-time continuum,” Paige makes the difficult decision to run away from home to pursue her dreams.
Every level consists of several 2D puzzles which resemble various parts of the world presented as flat sheets of paper – paths, village scenes, forests and more. Players will be faced with obstacles, and in order to progress past them, they’ll need to ‘fold’ parts of the world to change the geography, picking up keys, unlocking doors, and collecting origami souvenirs along the way.
Paper stages are typically folded vertically, horizontally, and/or diagonally, and as Paper Trail progresses, players are expected to fold each landscape in a myriad of interesting ways. The folding component of Paper Trail is very cool, and unlike any other puzzler I’ve played. Conceptually, Paper Trail has certainly upped the ante on what is possible within the genre.
Paper Trail becomes increasingly more complex over time – there are boulders that must be moved before a page can be turned or folded, and certain bridges require the pages to be arranged in such a way before Paige can move forward. This made completing certain stages a bit tedious, and many times, I had to restart levels to fix the messes I made. The Swamp and Forest levels were especially difficult for me to get through, which is a bit embarrassing given that they’re so early.
There is a feature that reveals the answers to each puzzle should players get stuck (thank god!) but all of these moving parts prevented me from relaxing into a good zone with the gameplay. I often had to think – hard – and while in-game assistance was available, I was too stubborn to use it regularly since relying on it too much felt defeating.
Despite any frustrations I may have had with the puzzles, Paper Trail is visually stunning, and the soundtrack even more so. Each level is saturated with color, the music compliments the landscape beautifully, and vignettes between each level were easily my favorite part. In them, players must fold the paper on the screen to construct a lovely image that accompanies a moment in Paige’s memories and current journey. Each bit of Paige’s present aligns with a moment in her past, which is a smart and imaginative way to play with temporality.
All in all, Paper Trail is a beautiful, thoughtful experience. This interesting approach to puzzle construction sets it apart from other sin the genre, and its audio-visual landscape only adds to its charm. While completing some of the levels was a struggle and having so many mechanics at once was difficult at times, Paper Trail remains a pleasure to venture through and solve.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
— Taylor Pryor
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Newfangled Games. It is currently available on PC, XBO/S/X, PS4/5, Switch, iOS and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game is rated E by the ESRB, and has no content descriptors. Although the puzzles in Paper Trail can be complex, the assistance button makes it more accessible and kid friendly. There is no objectionable content here.
Colorblind Modes: The game has no colorblind modes.
Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles that can be resized. Game progression is not contingent upon audio cues, and low-motion cameras are available. Therefore, Paper Trail is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Certain functions in the game are remappable. Controller vibration, cursor sensitivity, and speaker settings can all be altered, and controller triggers can also be adapted if necessary.
She is a lover of the RPG genre and a casual MMO player. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she can be found watching Elden Ring lore videos, playing some iteration of the Final Fantasy series, climbing rocks, or doing tarot readings.
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