It’s a very cosy week in this week’s round up. As we look at a quaint story puzzler and glorious paper folding experience.
Tell Me Your Story
DEVELOPER: RedDeer.Games
PUBLISHER: RedDeer.Games
Formats: PC
Price: £7.19
Steam Deck: Unknown (Plays fine)
Tell Me Your Story is one of those games that just hits you instantly with just how lovely it is. There is very little in way of direction, instead the story being told invites you to discover, to click around and see what does what.
If IU was to try and describe in to you, it is like a lighter version of A Little To The Left and Unpacking, but with the story telling of Dordogne, again just not quite as full on as in that particular game. But those three seem to be clear inspiration for this.
The story completely draws you in, as you learn more and more about Amelia and her Grandma, with their tales told through a series of puzzles that will see you organising, sorting, finding, etc. It is light and breezy on the whole and never gets too stressful.
That’s not to say that some thinking isn’t required. Just aimlessly clicking around will get you nowhere, but you are encouraged to experiment. Can I put this here? Can I do this? What happens with that? Oh that pretty clever!
The whole experience is a night or two, depending on how fast you decide to move through the game, but it feels like an experience that has been tightly honed and cuts off at just the right moment. I cannot recommend this enough.
Paper Trail
DEVELOPER: Newfangled Games
PUBLISHER: Newfangled Games
Formats: PC
Price: TBD
Steam Deck: Unknown (Just fine)
I really wasn’t sure wjat I was expecting when I first booted up Paper Trail, but I certainly wasn’t ready for what I played, that’s for sure.
Paper Trail can be described as a cosy puzzle game, but it goes a lot deeper and took me through a range of emotions in the story that was being told. Whilst part full of optimism, it isn’t scared to challenge some areas of thought. I won’t go into detail as the less you know, the more impactful it will be.
What really shines though is just how well the core concept of the game works. You navigate Paige through the world, where you encounter various issue that will try and hinder the progress. From something as simple as a patch being blocked, to the much more complicated to work out.
An example being needing to find various keys, to unlock doors, to gtet another thing, to place on this to finally open that. Spread across more than one screen. But how you do this is brilliant and will make you feel at times dumb as hell and then in the next breath, an utter genius.
Consider each screen, level, area as a piece of paper that can be folded, from each edge and each corner. You combine these various folds to create new paths, open access to new area, find secrets and much, much more.
It can be frustrating at times, as you think you have a solution, but can’t get the right folds, but the more you progress the more you understand the little tricks that will work. Paper Trail teaches you be making you learn through trial and error. But not that ‘oh this is bull!!!!’ type of trial and error, instead it is a logical way of trying things to see what works.
One example is when I had to get a rock onto a pressure pad to open a door. I thought I had the solution, but got to a point I couldn’t get round to the rock in the right place to move it the final section. But I learned how to get from point A to point B, I’d need to make some folds to temporarily move the rock to point C first, so I could then get into the better position to get it onto the pressure pad.
Describing it can make it sound a bit obtuse, but when you are experimenting and working things out for yourself it all feels right. Like solving a Slitherlink puzzle, where you need to make some educated guesses in your head to work out where it may lead, before executing. Yet at no point do any of the puzzles get to a point where you feel totally lost and broken.
Even if you do, there is a hint system that will basically tell you the order of the folds you need to make to complete the section. For me this is a great feature to have, as it doesn’t punish you for using it and stops you being stuck pointlessly for too long so you can move on and see more of the game.
To give an example, I think I used the hints twice, as there were two puzzles I just couldn’t work out, but the solution showed me I was missing something obvious and I don’t think I even used the entire hint. But the fact it is there is some great accessibility 5that I’d welcome in more games.
This is a great experience and highly recommended.
