Paper Trail is a beautiful puzzler that’ll turn your brain to pulp

When I first played Paper Trail at the BitSummit indie festival in Kyoto last July, I came away impressed but concerned.

It was the first game I played at the show, and what was supposed to be a quick demo ended up taking more than half an hour, because I got stuck at one particular section. Even the person stood next to me, who had been involved in the game’s development, couldn’t figure out what to do next.

This wasn’t a fault of the game as such – its difficult puzzles are its calling card, after all. But my summary of the game said its central mechanic was “a pretty difficult one to get your head around”, and that “we were told that there may be a hint system put in place before release, which would be extremely helpful”.

Now that the final version of Paper Trail is here, I can confirm that it’s just as difficult as it was a year ago. However, I can also confirm that the promised hint system is indeed included, and it’s a solid one – it makes the game far more accessible and less frustrating, but also ensures players can’t rely solely on it.

The game puts you in control of Paige (geddit?), a teenage girl leaving her home for the first time to seek a life of academic study. Whereas most of us travelled to university by car or train, Paige has to navigate a series of maze-like environments, each consisting of a number of individual screens.

Each screen initially appears impossible to navigate, until you make use of the game’s main gimmick. The screen actually has two sides, much like a piece of paper, and on the underside is a completely different layout.

By folding the screen at the sides or corners, you can join up one side with the other, changing the environment and making new paths to navigate. If you remember the fold-in jokes in Mad Magazine, it’s the video game equivalent of that.

It’s hard to explain on paper (ironically), so the trailer here is worth watching to get a better idea of how it works:

Within 10 minutes this mechanic will already have you scratching