Paper Trail Review

Paper. We see a lot less of it these days, what with all these newfangled computers and word processors, so it's a treat to be presented with a puzzle game committed entirely to sheets of crumply papyrus. Paper Trail has a lovely tactile feel, being a puzzler in which you fold each environment by its sides and/or corners in order to traverse its arresting watercolour world. From the makers of Hue, Paper Trail is imbued with the same sense of ingenuity as the 2016 colour-coded adventure, and has bags of charm to spare.

Telling the tale of Paige, a young girl leaving home for the first time, Paper Trail is a lovely, meditative affair, in which you need to wrap your head around how to make your way across each expanse, all through the art of folding. Some puzzles unfold over a single sheet of paper, while others have you folding several pieces to connect paths, redirect beams of light, move statues from one spot to another, or channel streams of yellow energy to power up and unlock doors. Developer Newfangled Games has crafted some fiendish conundrums, and each one is a treat. Well, most of them anyway.

Like any good puzzler, things start off gently, with indicators telling you where to fold the edges of a page, using the left or right trigger to grab at the seams or at a page's corner before using the right analogue stick to curl the paper over in the desired direction. Folding sheets hither and thither in Paper Trail adheres to the rules you'd expect, so once Paige has stood on a folded bit, you can't fold it again with her standing on it. The same goes for the boulders and statues you move onto folded segments, and therein lies the challenge – moving things around while folding.

On more than one occasion, you'll be shifting objects around, maybe across connected pages (incidentally, you can't overlap folded bits), all in an effort to make it to the next chapter in Paige's quest. From her idyllic home, you'll venture into dank, labyrinthine caves, swampland teeming with frogs, a fertile forest, an ancient stone temple harbouring dormant mechanisms, an azure ocean with MC Escher-esque craggy stairways, and a city comprising snowy rooftops. And each new level brings with it a new papery wrinkle to get to grips with.

By the time you've reached the latter parts of the game, you'll be folding one page, causing another to simultaneously fold in the opposite direction, horizontally and vertically. You'll be lining up a door's entrance and its corresponding exits to take a shortcut from one place to another, scaling ladders, refracting light beams from its source to a switch that activates a bridge, taking little floating platforms to and fro, perhaps stopping to uncover secrets or track down a little origami collectible, should you have the inclination. It's all good fun, engaging the brain while soothing you with its gentle soundtrack.

Paper Trail's painterly storybook world is a pleasant place in which to while away a few hours, its puzzles expertly constructed and paper-folding mechanics providing a simple, unique hook. There are one or two overly convoluted, brain-bending puzzles peppered throughout, and folding corners or edges that are close together can be a tad fiddly, but Paper Trail succeeds in being a wonderful adventure despite a couple of minor creases.