It's rather appropriate that the idea for Paper Trail - a game where you have to fold paper to solve puzzles - came from a brainstorming session where Newfangled Games' founders and brothers, Henry and Fred Hoffman, folded the paper of their hand drawn levels, then noticed that the puzzles on the front and the back could combine to make an even bigger puzzle. This one magic idea stuck from the off - but Newfangled Games' debut indie didn't always look like the polished puzzler it is now. There were some conceptual design bumps in the road, a trip to Boxpark Shoreditch, and a Netflix deal to chase before they could reach Paper Trail's true potential.

In the release version of Paper Trail, you play as Paige, who runs away from the 'forgotten seaside town' of Southfold to pursue her dream of attending university and becoming an Astrophysicist. Instead of just catching the train like the rest of us, Paige bends the space-time continuum to fold the world around her. You see her rural world from a top-down perspective, like looking at a piece of paper, and then you fold the world, just like that paper, to reveal the pattern on the other side to create paths, move objects, and combine symbols. A simple mechanic that creates some deceptively hard, but rewarding, puzzles. However, initially, Paper Trail was more of a sidescroller, but "there wasn't a huge amount of variety you could do with it," Henry Hoffman tells me as I chat with him on a video call. "It was interesting one-off interactions, but it didn't really have any scope beyond that."

So then Paper Trail transformed into more of a Metroidvania, where you fold the map itself rather than the levels. "And it's funny," Henry tells me, "because we weren't aware of Carto at the time, and I don't think Carto had come out, but that's very much what that ended up doing, where you're zooming out and manipulating the environment and rearranging." But this map folding didn't work for them either, "because there wasn't any real immediate feedback from folding the macro environment," Henry explains. "You would do that and then you wouldn't really see exactly what had happened, it would be a little bit confusing and disorienting."

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Paper Trail brought to us by Newfangled Games is a puzzle adventure game that’s been described as a premium mobile game, it’s made it on to console, does it stand up or will it crumple?

The moment I saw the trailer I had Paper Trail bookmarked, I’m a sucker for a few things when it comes to games. A unique premise, charming art style and narrative I can become invested in. Paper Trail seemed to promise all three so when Newfangled Games offered us a review code I almost folded myself in two to accept. 

Paper Trail begins by introducing us to Paige, she’s just been accepted into university and she’s excited to begin her journey, longing to leave her sleepy little village and become an astrophysicist. There’s just one problem, Paige’s parents don’t want her to go. Well, tough, Paige is all set to run away a begin her new life, but a storm hit’s and she’s stranded. Initially tasked by her folks to check on some of the locals an adventure unfolds that not even Paige could have journaled in her wildest dreams. 

I’m not going to spoil any of the story contained within Paper Trail, it’s a charming narrative of longing for change and coming of age full of whimsy and wholesome moments that I found heartwarming and kept me invested the entire time. 

Invested…I love puzzle games but up until Paper Trail they’ve all struggled to keep me invested, be it though a uninspired narrative or the fact that the actual mechanics of the puzzle become one note once you’d figured out the system. This often meant that for an hour or two a puzzle game would have my focus but I’d quickly loose interest, or on occasion they’d become so fiendishly difficult I’d sulk and never play them again. 

As I’ve already mentioned the story of Paper Trail won me over but what of the gameplay?

The world of Paper Trial begins with Southfold (adorable homely name and a pun, excellent work Newfangled) Paige’s hometown, but the world itself is essentially 2D but exists on two sides of a piece of paper, your job is to get Paige from A to Z, but doing this will mean folding the world in on itself. You can fold from any edge, horizontally, vertically or diagonally in from the corners. There are some limiting factors, you obviously can’t fold over Paige, and as your progress they will be certain aspects of the world that prevent you from folding over them as well.  The only minor issue I had while playing was the cursor speed, I’d often zip past the fold I want onto to wrong on, this has me wished for mouse, but it was easily fixed by lowering the sensitivity via the settings menu.

The short amount of time spent in Southfold acts as the games tutorial and the mechanic is refreshing and cool and seems fairly intuitive, but once your out in the big wide world things become a lot more complex and each new world adds a crumple into your folding plans. Examples of which might be boulders in the way, or needing to fold runes together to make sure doors open. Every new addition to the core puzzle mechanic is fantastic and adds a degree of challenge at a perfect pace. It’s also not easy, there were a good few times when I couldn’t figure out what I was suppose to do and started to get a folding headache, most notably the first time I realised I could move a wooden platform across multiple pages. Well, if in being honest, I didn’t work it out, I used the games hint system. 

Hint systems in puzzle games normally drive me crazy as the are normally poorly implemented and just flat out tell you the answer and leave you feeling stupid and judged by the game. Paper Trial is different, they game will show you the folding pattern you need to do in order, but it breaks it down, so you can view as much or as little of the solution as you’d like. What’s fantastic however is that it will show you the folding pattern but not anything to do with the interactive elements of the game, so the hint really is just that. It relieves  frustration but in a gentle way that doesn’t rob the player of a sense of accomplishment. 

Visually Paper Trail is beautiful, it’s a joy to look at and the character designs are simply adorable, special mention to the frogs, I don’t know if Newfangled would ever release prints of the game or an art book but I would be first on the list to order them. 

The post Review – Paper Trail (Xbox Series X) appeared first on GameHype.

I’d like to start this review with a question: What’s the difference between overcoming a challenge and thinking “I did it!” and one that leaves you sighing “It’s over!”? I may leave little insights scattered throughout. A Paper Trail, if you will. A puzzle game named Paper Trail that has you solve discrete head-scratchers by folding the screen like a piece of paper in different ways to create new paths, I might even say, if I were trying to cram a bunch of information right at the top without breaking theme. Let’s talk about it.

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Hello and welcome back to What To Play! We've returned from a little hiatus, which you definitely noticed and have been very sad about, of course. It's finally edging towards spring here in the UK, but don't let that tempt you into going outside, there's video games to be a-playin'!

As ever, this is where we'll round up the best games from the month gone by, and the things we're most excited to play from the month ahead - plus, any other suggestions for what might complement it. Here's What To Play This May 2024.

Availability: Out now on PC, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

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Puzzles are a tricky thing to perfect in video games. They're present in so many different genres - typically giving us some small goal to work towards between blasting enemies and searching for resources - but are also rarely as engaging as they could be, when not a game's main focus. For more creative solutions (and creative problems) we have to turn to the dedicated puzzle genre, of course. These days, indie games rule the space, but with so many out there in the wild west of digital storefronts what makes a puzzler stand out? Paper Trail answers this with one basic idea: folding paper.

Folding the piece of paper your character is standing on reveals the picture on the underside of that page, which can have keys, doors, and pathways to your destination. Or, the underside can fill in part of a pattern required to magically unlock other areas. You can fold pages from the top, bottom, sides, or four corners. Playing Paper Trail is as straight-forward as that, but simple controls do not equal a simple game.

I'd hazard a guess we've all had to push a heavy object onto a switch to get through a door at some point in our gaming histories, so it's no surprise Paper Trail includes this almost customary puzzle in its demo. However, I've never had to fold my way to the solution before. With this one addition, a mainstay puzzle suddenly requires a whole new way of thinking. What corner do I fold first? In what order? Where should the statue be when I start to fold? Where should I be standing? It doesn't have a wildly complicated solution, but it does feel satisfying when the lightbulb moment happens. This one new layer of thinking is easy enough to comprehend, but tough enough to impress.

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