I’m a bit of a sucker when it comes to puzzle games with a cutesy art style, so when I saw that indie puzzler Paper Trail had a Steam demo I immediately downloaded it to take a look. The demo covers the first three areas of the game and took me just under an hour to finish, though don’t be fooled into thinking its puzzles are breezy because of its appearance. Paper Trail has some proper head-scratchers - something we love to see here at Thinky.
Paper Trail’s puzzle twist is that its world is made entirely out of paper, meaning you can fold the world in on itself. Playing as Paige (very cute, Newfangled Games) you need to traverse through different environments, folding the corners and edges of the map to create new pathways.
There’s an image on the other side of the folded paper too, so you need to create a clear pathway to help Paige get from point A to point B using both the front and back of the map. Each area throws an extra puzzle element into the mix, the first includes only folding the paper if you can match up dice of the same number, and the second area has you move tiles around that mimic the style of block-pushing puzzles. One initial thought I had when I first started playing was that the game’s paper-folding might become a little repetitive, but these new additions make each area’s batch of puzzles feel refreshing.
There's a lovely rhythm to Paper Trail. You click on the pathway to move Paige, then fold the map to create a new path, move her again, fold again, move, fold, and so on. Folding the world feels so tangible as you have to click the corner of the map and drag it into position instead of it snapping into place automatically. I love this style of puzzle where you interact with the map like it was a physical object (Carto comes to mind too) which is why I found Paper Trail so satisfying to play.
I really like the game's general vibe too. I do wish there was more of a focus on a storyline, but the atmosphere alone was enough to entice me through the demo. It’s a laid-back game, but its blue-y, purple-y colour palette and choral soundtrack evoke a strange melancholy undertone.
This could be me reading into it too much, but I also felt it had a creepy children’s book vibe, almost like Grimm's Fairy Tales. You at one point meet a bearded man in a cave and when you help him find the exit he gets super excited about seeing the moon for the first time in years. Two young children fishing alone on a boat warn you about how dangerous the swamp is and that something has been spotted lurking in the water at nighttime. It wouldn’t feel out of place if I folded the paper map and one of the children just completely disappeared.
It's not going to put your puzzle-solving skills to the test massively, but Paper Trail feels like a game you can cosy up with one evening with a cup of tea. It's perfect for some light puzzle-solving with the occasional head scratcher thrown in for good measure. After playing the demo, I’m keen to play more of Paper Trail and thankfully I won’t have to wait long. Paper Trail is coming to Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox S/X, PlayStation 4 + 5, and Netflix on May 21st.
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