Fold and tear the world itself in this unique paper puzzle game

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Solve puzzles in Paper Trail by grabbing the corners of the world and folding it in on itself.

You need to cross a river, but there's a gap in the bridge you're standing on. What do you do? In puzzle game Paper Trail, the world is drawn on foldable paper, so you grab the corner of the page and fold it over. And wouldn't you know it, on the other side of the paper there's a length of bridge that perfectly fills that gap. You just folded the world and solved a puzzle, and now you can cross the bridge, unfold the page, and carry on with your journey.

Plenty of games have storybook looks, but Paper Trail takes it a step further by letting you manipulate the world itself by bending, folding, or tearing its pages. It's a novel approach to puzzle-solving which is helped by genuinely beautiful watercolor artwork and an absorbing and haunting soundtrack. Check out the new Paper Trail teaser above, shown at Wholesome Games direct today.

You play Paper Trail as the aptly-named Paige, the first person from her village to ever be invited to attend university, but first she has to get there by mastering her folding powers along the way. On your trip through the intriguing foldable world you'll meet quirky characters, each with their own story, and solve gradually more complex puzzles which include other systems like rotating the world's pages, moving and pushing objects, and shining lights into dark places.

There's a new demo of Paper Trail on Steam, but it's only available for the weekend so you'd better get moving. The full game is planned for early 2023.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.