izigame.me

One of the most creative, inventive and brilliantly designed puzzle games i've played, even though there's some real brain twisters involved. Paper trail takes the idea of folding paper to the next level by adding tons of extra elements into the formula, making it both more challenging and keeping it fresh. There's never once a puzzle that gets stale because each of the 9 chapters has its own gimmick that changes the way you think about it. What makes the game so brilliant though is the simple fact that you can fold not only horizontally and vertically but also diagonally as well. Not every page is square or rectangular either so that alone creates a ton of variety especially in later stages with side pages and ledges that get thrown into the mix.
There's also another brilliant mechanic at play where you cannot fold a piece over or underneath yourself so you have to think ahead most of the time. Other objects like heavy statues or boulders also have this property further challenging your options, which makes for some real head scratchers. While things like portals, moving platforms and elevations further complicate matters. Paper trail however never goes too far, always having an approachable design to each of its puzzles, of which there are plenty to solve. I was actually very suprised at the amount of different puzzles the devs were able to come up with, and it really speaks volumes about their creative genius. As it is much harder to design a puzzle that is both hard and solvable.
The game is bug & lag free, had no possible softlocks and didn't crash once during my playtime, so it's safe to say that the game is incredibly polished. Not only technically but also visually as all the pages look utterly beautiful with clear and well defined lines never cluttering the screen. There's also an amazing soundtrack to soothe your ears, one that reminded me of Ori's luma pools at times which is in my opinion still the greatest OST of all time! Finally we arrive at story and while it had a subplot that had me really invested it didn't go anywhere in the end. I had hoped to find some closure of this subplot in some way, good or bad. But the main plot is still enough to give some meaning to it all. The cutscenes being told with folding as well was refreshing and thematically consistent! All in all paper trail is a super solid game to challenge your grey matter :)