Room Escape Artist

Paper Trail is included in our recommendation guide for Play at Home Puzzle Games. For more of the best online escape games in this style, check out the recommendation guide.

Paper Trail is a point-and-click game developed and published by Newfangled Games .

Format

Style of Play:

• Point-and-click

Who is it For?

• Puzzle lovers
• Any experience level

Required Equipment: Computer with an internet connection. This game is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Playstation, and Netflix Games.

Recommended Team Size: 1

Play Time: No game clock, but expect 8-9 hours to finish the entire game (including all the collectibles).

Price: $19.99

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

The main puzzle mechanic is using the mouse to fold the world map your character is on. The reverse side of the map is different and you have to selectively fold and walk on/ through the different sides of the map to get to the end of each level. Each world adds a new mechanic – movable platforms, blocks that can’t be folded over, etc. – to slowly increase the difficulty.

Andrew Reynolds’ Reaction

Paper Trail was a great game that managed to straddle the line between mind-bending and cozy. The unique mechanic of folding the world map that your character stood on occasionally posed some deep spatial reasoning challenges. But the calm nature of the game and the soothing soundtrack combined to create a gaming atmosphere that I was happy to be in while puzzling.

Perhaps Paper Trail’s greatest achievement was its ability to teach and build on new mechanics without a single word of dialog after the initial instructions provided in the first level. Each world introduced a new mechanic that built up on or added to the challenges imposed by previous worlds. Novel mechanics felt entirely intuitive while maintaining a high degree of challenge.

The developers nailed the difficulty flow as well. Harder levels were sometimes followed up by simpler ones rather than just compounding the difficulty. This led to constant feelings of success, and allowed for a well-managed ramp in difficulty towards the capstone challenge of each area.

Paper Trail did most everything right. The creators gave us a game that was both challenging and accessible, a win for seasoned puzzlers and newbies.

Joel Smileypeacefun Reaction

You’re following the character Paige, who is trying to fold her way from a small village to the big city where she finally wants to attend university.

At its best, the levels you’re playing are full of adorable graphics. Each chapter has a distinct art style alongside some beautifully curated music and cut scenes. The epilog was especially magical. The folding mechanism used never overstayed its welcome and if you want a harder challenge, there are bonus missions throughout your journey.

At its worst, one chapter felt oddly short compared to the others. Additionally, the story’s ending did not fully resolve all my questions about what happened.

This top-down puzzle adventure set in a paper world captured my brain and heart, as it was fun to play, and also had an emotional tale surrounding it.

Matthew Stein’s Reaction

I’ve always adored paper, and I even went by the alias “The Origami Wizard” as a child. As such, the core mechanic of Paper Trail — folding double-sided scenes to align new elements — instantly drew me in. The game strongly embraced its origami theming, with a charmingly hand-painted, almost collage-esque style and origami creature bonuses hidden throughout certain levels. The metaphor went even deeper; reminiscent of A Wrinkle in Time, folding represented the higher dimensional manipulation of time and space as the main character left home and journeyed out into the world.

The level design was satisfying, if at times a bit repetitive. Each chapter introduced a new variation or submechanic, which progressively layered on each other in classic puzzle video game fashion. The best levels were entire worlds with intricate structures requiring sneaky spatial manipulation. This style of repeated visual reframing reminded me of one of my all-time favorite games, Gorogoa, and it’s a puzzle style I’d love to see more frequently explored.

Outside of the gameplay, I was blown away by the extended application of folding interactivity to the cutscenes and credits. The artistic direction of these scenes was especially clever and moving.

If you’re looking for a highly visual puzzler with approachably clever gameplay, Paper Trail is a strong pick.