The first thing that will jump out to you when starting the new indie puzzle game Paper Trail is how damn good it looks. A gorgeous color palette, lovingly crafted characters and environments that look like an arts-and-crafts project, and an almost tangible feel to the visible fold lines on the screen are wonderful to behold. That’s a good thing for a game that will have you staring at the screen for minutes at a time due to its complex puzzles.
And that’s the game—well-designed puzzles in a beautiful art style packaged into a roughly seven-hour experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s as simple as that, and while there are some shallow elements to the game, it nails the most important part of enjoyable puzzle design. The big selling point of Paper Trail is its unique approach to puzzles.
The game takes place in a 2D world viewed from above that you navigate through from screen to screen a la a classic Zelda title. But here the path is always impeded by a broken bridge, missing platforms, or some other obstacle. To overcome these obstacles, you can fold the pieces of the screen in on itself.
Imagine each screen is a collection of flat paper pieces and that your job is to make origami out of them. By folding the screen at its corners and edges, you’re able to reveal the underside of the map and connect it in ways that let you progress forward. That starts simple, with puzzles just requiring you to fix a single path, but Paper Trail slowly adds new twists .
