Paper Trail

Paper Trail is an adventure puzzle game. You’re Paige, a girl that leaves her parents’ house for her studies and has to fold her way through various places to reach the university.

The world of Paper Trail is composed of paper tiles of various shapes. Every tile in the game is double-sided and foldable, the backside of the tiles contains paths that can be brought in the front when the tile is folded.
You can see the backside with the right click, so you can technically think before folding… but in truth, it’s faster to just fold and see what happens. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to think though. While the goal is to progress, the puzzles are not always just about folding and finding the correct path.
Each world introduces new mechanics such as rocks that need to be brought on buttons, doors acting as portals or lasers that need to be redirected. So, Paper Trail has plenty of classic puzzles that actually force you to understand what you’re doing.

The difficulty is surprisingly very well balanced. The concept of the game makes it really hard to create decently challenging puzzles without feeling unfair or tedious, yet they still went for it and it works well. The hidden collectible origamis also add another layer of difficulty in case you want more.
The beautiful art and music are both very pleasant, and probably the main appeal. That’s why I was surprised by the game not being very easy, I was sure it would over-focus on the art and neglect the puzzles like a lot of similar games do. It’s good to be wrong sometimes.

Paper Trail is an overall solid artistic puzzle adventure, recommended.

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Developer: Newfangled Games
Publisher: Newfangled Games
Platforms: Steam – Windows/macOS, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series, Xbox One, Android, iOS
Release Date: May 21, 2024