As an origami figure brought to life, this simple 2.5D puzzle plat-former has tons of heart and it’s obvious that OpenHouseGames has a lot of pride in this title. From the first five minutes of playing, I wanted to love this game, I truly did. However, there were several, huge, factors that left a sour taste in my mouth and not enough positive ones to balance it out.

A Few Tricks Up His Sleeves…Just a Few

After awakening on a dusty bedroom floor, in an empty house, the adventure kicks off without much of an introduction. We are given control of a small origami figure and not given much other guidance. Moving around the room reveals the path rather quickly and the environments are used in a clever way to run you through the basic premise and expectations, with crude diagrams scribbled onto sheets of paper. These, along with tiny mushrooms that illuminate once you get close, serve as your guiding beacons along the way, as well as serving as nifty ways to brighten up the darker areas further on in the game.

The hook for this title is the ability of your little origami figure to change shape and turn into several other forms that all serve to complete the numerous puzzles along the way. All of these puzzles come in the form of your typical platformer; positioning elevators to the proper elevation, lowering water levels to open the next path, etc. None of these are new to the genre, but the addition of using several different forms helps keep it somewhat fresh. At times, these forms have to be changed back in forth in quick succession. All of these forms have their pros and cons. For example, the first form learned, is that of the mighty frog. The ability to jump much farther comes at the cost of not being able to take individual steps. There are several forms, and each comes with a pretty big trade off to prevent overuse and abuse. Each form is well implemented and the level, as well as puzzle, design compliments each one.

Once you have progressed past the first few areas, the first enemy appears. I chuckled to myself when I saw that this enemy was a demonized Roomba that chases you around the room without reprieve. Enemies in this game are relatively scarce and there isn’t much in the area of diversity. There are only a few and, since there is no combat, there are no actual boss fights. The closest thing would be a small section that is heavily based on the chase levels from the Crash Bandicoot series…and I mean heavily. I will say that this section, as well as a few others, do a decent job of ratcheting up the tension. Other than these, the main enemies in the game are in the controls and the forced camera.

Scissors Beats Paper

One thing I noticed right from the beginning, was the inability to make minor movements. There are a few jumps in the game that require you to get relatively close to the edge of the platform. Moving your character on screen means shifting the analog stick, almost fully to one side or the other. Moving the analog stick slightly in one direction will only sometimes allow you to adjust on screen. There were several deaths that could’ve easily been avoided with tighter controls. However, since death isn’t much of a punishment in A Tale of Paper, this is a relatively minor complaint.

If you pair the controls with the fixed camera, this makes it incredibly difficult in areas to see the path of traversal. If you’ve played any 2.5/3D platformer over the last five years or so, you’ve probably seen this issue before. Looking at the level horizontally, at a 90 degree angle instead of at an elevated angle, creates blind spots due to the lack of depth perception. Luckily, in some areas, OpenHouseGames sought to make some of the narrow paths somewhat magnetic to make it harder to miss. This doesn’t seem to be the case for all of the pathways however.

Another small item was how repetitive the puzzles can be. The same formula is used over and over again. Turn on elevator and race up stairs in time to use elevator as jump platform to next area, adjust water valves to raise/lower the water in the next area, turn into new shape to complete obstacle, etc. Each puzzle was very simple and acted more as padding to fill out the game time. Though, I am not saying there was no fun to be had with any of these areas or the puzzles nearby; I honestly enjoyed every one of them.

However, my enjoyment was short lived when the credits started to roll about 50 minutes after I started playing. Luckily I sat and watched for a few additional moments and was pleasantly surprised that the game play started up again. This was a new area, although familiar, with a new character and all of my abilities had been stripped away. I was half relieved that there was more to play and half irritated that I was starting from scratch. This lasted for another 20 minutes before the final set of credits rolled. Needless to say I was fairly disappointed that a $15 purchase would only last for an hour and a half and have little to no replayability.

I would’ve been able to move past this, I thought, if only there had been a little more meat to the almost nonexistent story that’s presented during the short campaign. After the final credits rolled, I returned to the main menu and checked the newly opened extras menu option and that’s when I found the story. Throughout the game there are a handful of collectibles, but what the game doesn’t tell you, or at least tell you clearly, is that each collectible unlocks a portion of the backstory that can be seen in the extras menu. Granted, there is a chapter select so going back to get anything that you missed would take less than 30 minutes, but I believe I would’ve enjoyed the story aspect much better if I had been able to experience it as I went through it. I will give A Tale of Paper this, for the small moments of narrative we are given during the story pack quite a punch. There is a surprising amount of emotion packed into each small moment.

A Score to Beat

One area that A Tale of Paper does in excel in is with it’s score. The first major platforming section shows up within about ten minutes of the opening. At the bottom, the music starts softly and slowly builds to it’s peak as you reach the top. I was blown away by how well the score matched each of my character’s steps. In many other areas, the score becomes ethereal and in later levels fits the tone and art design as perfectly as I’ve seen.

A Small Payoff

All in all A Tale of Paper isn’t a bad game. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t give itself enough time for the negatives to get drowned out by the positives. Small items such as the fixed camera, loose controls, and forcing the collection of items to reveal the main story, really stand tall when there’s nothing on the opposite end of the spectrum to contrast with. If it had it given itself another hour or so, I would’ve easily given it an 8. However, at 90 minutes and no reason to replay it, I would wait for this to be on sale before picking it up unless you are a sucker for these types of platformers. However, if you honestly can’t resist this genre, you probably won’t be disappointed here.

            If you’re reading this, then congratulations! You made it through the exhausting year that was 2020! As bleak as things may have seemed at times, at least there weren’t any zombies. We can gladly say that zombies remain, for the time being, consigned to the world of fiction. After a tumultuous year like this last one, killing some zombies may be just what you need. If that’s the case, I urge you to seek your undead-pummeling therapy session in any game that isn’t the absolute mess known as Unturned. 

            Developed by the poorly named FunLabs, Unturned is an, “open-world survival sandbox where you assume the role of a survivor in the zombie-infested ruins of modern-day society.” That’s a direct quote from the Microsoft Store description of the game, and it is there so that we can laugh at it. That description has the exact same level of personality, charm, and inventiveness that the game itself has: none. Zero. Zilch. Bupkis. Unturned is what would remain if you destroyed every ounce of humanity, zest, and creativity that existed. I can hear you beginning to type, “Isn’t that, like, a main part of a zombie apocalypse?” Yes, but shush. I’ll tell you what I mean, but allow me to first point out the game’s largest flaw.

            Unturned is one the ugliest games that I’ve ever seen. I don’t want to sound too mean, but it’s bad. Uglier than the most vile of sins, ugly. Dr. Jekyll doesn’t turn into the horrifying monster Hyde anymore, he turns into this game. Ever wonder what Michael Myers is afraid of? It’s this game. Now you know. The entirety of the game looks like it was made as an amateur student project. Character models, vehicles, houses, the environment, weapons, backpacks, skins, clothing, everything looks like an ugly placeholder for a game that is leagues away from completion. There isn’t a single shred of art direction or cohesion to any of the game’s visual elements.

            Going back to the earlier paragraph, Unturned’s exceptionally plain aesthetic could best be summed up as the template for a game described as “the zombie-infested ruins of modern-day society.” It’s the template. As I wandered the world, I eventually stumbled upon a building that simply said, “HOSPITAL” in large red letters. Other than that and the entire building being white, there was nothing else to it. It feels like a game that was created by a computer program. There’s no sense of story, life, or anything even remotely descriptive. It’s not a farm that was worked by a small family, it’s Placeholder Farm #2. It’s not a firehouse where people used to live, it’s Red Square Building #5. Perhaps the game was modeled after an assortment of a six-year-old’s LEGO creations. Those LEGO creations probably look better than the game, however, since they wouldn’t be affected by various forms of ugly lighting all at once.

            Now, allow me to say that I’m one of the first people who will defend a game’s art style. Games like Undertale, Thomas Was Alone, and Minecraft don’t have the shiniest, fanciest graphics of all time, but they have direction. They have artistic effort behind them, and each one aims for a specific, aesthetic style. Unturned does not do that with its visuals or with its gameplay. 

As a survival game, your goal is to do just that – survive. Make it through the nights and days, eat food, drink water, build a fort, and so on. However, doing these activities is an absolute slog. Everything takes way too long to do. Healing yourself takes ages, opening the menu to grab a piece of clothing, exiting the menu to physically hold the clothing and press a button to put it on, and killing zombies all take too much time. Even on the easiest difficulty and with pretty good gear it takes an exorbitant amount of damage to kill a zombie. Don’t even get me started on walking from place to place. I understand that, for some odd reason, every single video game has to be an open-world game in order to be a video game, but the open-world here is way too big. Perhaps it makes vehicles more appealing, but that’s like saying two flies in your soup is better than one since every vehicle is buggy to the point of unusable.

What’s the point of the game? I wish I could tell you, reader. After what felt like hours of wandering around and finding only bullets, clothing, and bandages, finding a gun made me think, “Ah-ha! Maybe the shooting will actually be pretty fun.” I was a fool to believe. Unturned’s gunplay is stiff, clunky, and tedious. There is no joy to be had in dispatching zombies, and I found that, in most situations, it was somehow less work to lead zombies far from the objects I was attempting to loot than to kill them. As one could easily guess, a zombie survival game where it isn’t fun to kill the zombies does not make for a very compelling zombie survival game.

Again, I don’t want to be a bully, but this game is simply unfinished. I should point out that there is no end goal either. The game expects you to run around, loot, kill zombies, and build a base forever. Perhaps you and a friend or two could have a bit of fun playing with one another, but that just means you have fun friends. With such a  mindlessly repetitive, uninspired, and predictable gameplay loop and my now go-to example of horrible visuals, Unturned is, like a zombie, better off dead.

            You know what’s cool? Indie games. I remember a time where the idea of an indie game was impossible. A game played by hundreds of thousands and it doesn’t come from a huge company? Can you really call it a video game? Now, thankfully, we live in an indie game renaissance of sorts. It’s easier than ever to create a game and have it published onto almost every platform imaginable. One of the original indies that paved the way was Super Meat Boy. An absolutely brutal platformer that rewarded precision, patience, and resilience. It garnered such a cult following way back when that it kind of created its own platforming subgenre. Double Pug Switch is a platformer that feels as if it’s trying to find a place within that niche portion of gaming. Unfortunately, neither its bark nor bite are anything impressive.

            Developed by The Polygon Loft, this side-scrolling, jumping adventure sees a good lil’ pupper of a pug named Otis get sucked into an alternate dimension. This is a direct result of the wicked kitty cat Whiskers knocking over some experimental chemicals within the lab of the professor that owns these fuzzy characters. Aside from being an insidious piece of anti-cat propaganda, it sets the game’s plot in motion, and now it’s up to Otis and his other-dimensional half to stop Whiskers from…*checks notes* creating an army. Look, it isn’t Shakespeare. 

            Dorky story aside, what we really want to know in a platformer is if it’s any fun. The answer is a big ol’ kinnnndaaa-no. Not really. Let’s start by talking about the double-pug switching part of Double Pug Switch. Due to travelling between dimensions, Otis now has the ability to switch between two versions of himself. This causes him to change colors and it makes certain objects, platforms, or baddies change as well. That platform look a bit too transparent? You’ll probably fall right through it. Switch dimensions to make it usable, and get ready to switch a lot more to make it through the rest of the level. This is a fine idea, and there are plenty of moments where you can pull off some last minute dimension hopping that feels and looks super slick. However, those moments are too few and far between. Not only that, but they’re hampered by the remaining design choices of the game.

            For starters, Otis is a little doggo. He is not a light doggo. Otis’s weight feels unsuited for this type of platformer. In a game where near-perfect precision is crucial, you don’t want a character to be too floaty or, in this case, to sink faster than CD Projekt Red’s stock after the release of Cyberpunk 2077. His weight also made it frustratingly common for everything to look like I was about to land safely on a ledge, only for Otis to awkwardly slide backwards a bit before plummeting into a chasm. However, Otis’s weight might feel better if not for the game’s biggest mistake: auto-scrolling.

            Yes, that dreaded beast. Everyone’s least favorite level in every platformer is any level that makes the screen scroll on its own. However, the auto-scrolling in Double Pug Switch is twice as evil because Otis carries himself from left to right. “If I don’t need the left half of this controller in my hands, why do I have it?” I thought before grabbing my hacksaw. In a platformer, or any game for that matter, letting the player have or at least feel like they’re in control is crucial. Effectively telling the player to sit, watch the pretty colors, and occasionally press a button or two at the exact moments they’re supposed to doesn’t feel like a lot of control. In fact, it barely feels like a video game at that point.

            Auto-scrolling and auto-running beg the question of what it is the game is even trying to accomplish. If the gameplay makes up such a minor component of the game, is there an interesting story or message to be told? Oh, yeah. Evil cat that is now a cyborg for some reason. If you’re really into the idea of pressing the right button when you’re told to, the game does at least have a nice checkpoint system. Seeing as Otis fails if he makes a single misstep or collides with an unsavory obstacle, not having to restart every level from the very beginning is a wonderful addition. Not only that, but there’s a lovely little progress bar at the top of the screen which shows how close you are to the level’s end. Though, I continued eyeing that like an impatient middle-schooler eyes the classroom clock.

            Even when an indie game doesn’t turn out to be amazing, it’s amazing that we have so many indie games. After all, would we be able to define the good games without the stinkers? It has a few good ideas, but they aren’t enough to turn the game into an enjoyable experience. With the smallest semblance of a plot, a character that feels too heavy and imprecise, and just plain odd design choices, Double Pug Switch is one indie platformer you’re better off missing.