TouchArcade Game of the Week: ‘Paper Trail’ – TouchArcade

This might be the first time ever I’ve picked two Netflix games in a row for Game of the Week. After Braid, Anniversary Edition last week they brought the heat once again with both Katana ZERO and Paper Trail this week. While Katana ZERO is an awesome game in its own right, it has been out for several years already, and plenty of people already know about its awesomeness. Paper Trail, on the other hand, just launched on all platforms this week, and it’s not too often that a mobile version launches simultaneously with its console and PC counterparts. That, coupled with the fact that it’s just plain brilliant, pushed Paper Trail to the top of my list for this week.

First, I need to admit, I read MAD Magazine a lot growing up and I absolutely adored the “MAD Fold-In” on the back cover of each issue. It would show an image, typically with a caption or comment, that when folded in just the right way would reveal a second hidden image making some sort of satirical comment about the first image. Here’s a nice collection of some in case you’re not familiar. Anyway, the point is that I really admired how the artist was able to create these “hidden” images that would appear if you manipulated the page the right way. Sometimes it was pretty obvious what the folded image would be, but other times I’d stare at the original image for a long time trying to figure out “where are they going with this one?” Good times.

Anyway, Paper Trail has a very similar intrigue for me. The levels are made up of these different pages with terrain on them. Hold two fingers on the screen and you can quickly see the back of each page which also has terrain and environments illustrated on them. By grabbing the edges or corners of the page and folding them into the image on the front, you can use what’s on the back to create new terrain for your character to traverse. It might sound simple, and it certainly starts very basic and straightforward, but pretty quickly things ramp up and all of a sudden you’re coming across these absolute brain-busting puzzles that require you to think about how the front and rear images work in harmony with each other in order to open a path forward.

Needless to say, the touchscreen feels the most well-suited for touching and dragging these pieces of paper around, and it makes me so happy to see that Paper Trail has launched on mobile alongside other platforms because in my opinion mobile is the lead platform for a game like this. The puzzles and how you need to wrap your brain around them, along with the excellent visuals, music, and world-building all give me heavy Monument Valley vibes, so if you’re into games like that then you should be well-served here. And if you don’t have Netflix, well, play it somewhere else by all means, but honestly with Netflix continuing to knock it out of the park week in and week out it might just be time to bite the bullet and start subscribing.