Despite Paper Beast’s issues, it’s a beautiful adventure that never forces you to rush, giving you all the time in the world to enjoy every aspect of it. Some environments are beautiful, others are menacing, but all have a person touch that’s got Chahl’s name all over it. There are moments when you’re looking down upon the valleys whilst riding in a hot air balloon, watching the herds of animals you’ve just saved, feeling a sense of achievement as you travel to the next puzzle. It’s a relaxing mix of string arrangements that walk with you as you make your way through the game, rousing in the more moving scenes with the capability of bringing a tear to your eye. The basic palette reminds me of Another World, and the paper animals are intricately designed, not just in their aesthetic but in the way they live and breathe. The concept of what I needed to do wasn’t an issue, but the execution was.Īlthough there were a few issues with controller responsiveness, the game is beautiful in VR. The animals were trying to climb up many different ways, and pulling them into position became a problem. Picking up the large clumps of sand wasn’t an issue, but making them stick in the correct place took time. Like other animals, these couldn’t simply be picked up, so I needed to throw huge balls of sand at the mountainside. There’s one puzzle where I needed to throw sand at a slippery surface so some metallic giraffes could climb up. The controls are simple, whether you choose to use the DualShock controller or the Move controllers, but there are times when grabbing objects became awkward. There’s plenty to get your head around in Paper Beast, and it gives you plenty of tools to get where you need to go. You may need to melt some ice to clear a path, tether some giraffes to huge crabs during a blizzard, or raise water levels in a pool so you can freeze the water and get across. You may come across a scenario that gives you no clear solution, but it’s one of those games where you kick yourself as the answer becomes clear. The majority of the puzzles are easy to solve. After an hour or so, when looking down onto the desert from on top of a mountain, an injured animal drags his body through the sand to spell out “this is not a simulation,” letting you know there’s something sinister going on. Not everything is friendly, and with the surreal undertones of the story, you’ll soon work out that nothing is as it seems.
You become invested in the various animals, watching how they interact within their own biomes, and also those they’re not familiar with.
It’s a puzzler at heart, with shades of Journey thrown in to provide the poignancy of the adventure. Paper Beast is a game from the mind of Eric Chahl – the man behind Atari classic Another World – and for saying this is his first game since 2011’s From Dust, it’s rather wonderful. There’s never any guidance, allowing you to ease into the game, but those serene moments playing with the origami giraffes soon take a darker turn. You move in short turns, pick items up, and teleport across the landscape. As the parent watches over them, you playfully toss them some food, making sure both of them get a fair share of the grub, whilst learning the fundamentals of the controls. You’re soon thrown into a pastel-coloured landscape filled with sand and rocks, inhabited by a small family of paper giraffes. The world that exists within Paper Beast affected me in a way I wasn’t expecting.
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