Paper Trail

Paper Trail is a charming yet challenging little top-down puzzle game with one central mechanic that all puzzles are built around: folding a piece of paper.

The story is paper-thin (sorry!) and it simply serves as a framework for the various puzzles. You take on the role of 18-year-old Paige, the first girl from her village to be offered a place at university. Her family is not happy about her leaving the village, but she wants to pursue her dreams of an education, so she leaves her family and embarks on a journey to a new life.

Her journey takes place on different pieces of paper where the game world and the different puzzles are placed. You typically start on one side of the paper and have to find your way to the exit, which is often located at the other end of the paper.

On the back of the paper, there is a similar game world, but with different platforms and different areas than on the front and you now have to fold the paper over the corners or from the sides to create a path for Paige to get to the exit. It may sound simple enough, but it didn't take long for me to get stuck. You really need to think outside the box to figure out the more complicated puzzles that you'll soon encounter.

It seems that the developers realised that they had created a challenging game, as you constantly have the opportunity to get part, or all, of the solution to a puzzle with a single button press. A timeline shows where the paper should be folded and in what order it should be folded.

As you progress through the game, various new mechanics are introduced, such as different platforms to move around, light beams to guide you to the right places or statues or large stones to move so you can get them to some switches that activate an exit or similar. But at the centre of it all is the folding mechanics and it works really well.

The visual style is quite unique, but it's not really my style. The game world almost looks like it was hand-drawn with watercolours and it's colourful and pretty - it's probably a visual style that will divide people a bit. The soundtrack is nice and relaxing, just as it should be in a game of this type.

Paper Trail is a really nice puzzle game, but it didn't quite blow me away. There's nothing wrong with it as such, and the various puzzles should provide a good amount of challenge, but it feels like something is missing. Without being able to put my finger on exactly what it is. But that doesn't change the fact that what's here works fine, and Paper Trail is a good choice for a small and slightly different puzzle game.