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Review
The Paper Magician is an interactive game centred around a singular puzzle. In it, you play an unnamed PC, a test subject, whose knowledge goes little further than the four grey walls around them and the books provided by the other scientists. That is until you meet a magical cat who helps you escape.
I’m a sucker for speculative fiction, especially when it has some fantastical elements attached to it! And boy, did this game scratched that itch!
I’m a sucker for speculative fiction, especially when it has some fantastical elements attached to it! And boy, did this game scratched that itch!
Told from the POV of the PC, the game starts with a fairly lengthy introduction, going through the thoughts and experiences of the PC stuck in the test room since they woke up. With no memories prior to their awakening (suspicious!), the PC describes their life in that room, what is around them, what they do, what they feel, what they hope…
It takes a while - until the introduction of the cat - for the story to move on, allowing both the PC and the player more agency and to tackle the main obstacle (escape!). Until then, the story is pretty linear, almost kinetic, with the few and far between choices adding little variation to the screen.
In the second beat, you are able to roam around the 8 available testing rooms, go through documents left behind, and attempt to enter codes to unlock a door and escape. Fail to enter the correct code, and the scientists are averted of your little escapade outside of your room, grabbing you and sending your right back in there.
In and of itself, the puzzle (entering the correct codes) is fairly straight forward. Each password is accompanied with a question related to a bit of information found in the documents. The downside of those textboxes is that they don’t just require the correct string of word(s), it also needs to be formatted the correct way (capitalised). While the first is slightly annoying, as the phrasing of the documents gives some questions a bunch of options for answers, the latter is pretty frustrating - not all words are capitalised…
This adds A Lot of friction to the game, since getting the answer wrong sends you back to your cell.
Another bit that made it more difficult than it should was navigating the little complex. Even with only 8 rooms, the way their locations were defined was a bit confusing - especially when the description mentions opposite walls, but the directions are next to each other ( East - South). Drawing a map will help, especially to remember where each code need to be inserted (in case you fail).
Finally, if you manage to enter the correct codes in the correct places, you will trigger the final third of the game: your escape.
The ending sequence is a bit bittersweet, returning to the more kinetic approach, similar to the introductory part. The events are played out before your eyes, without much interaction required from the player, de-escalating greatly the tension built during the puzzle. But it is also very lovely, and sweet, giving a proper send-off to the story with its resolution.
And yet, I did leave the game wishing for a bit more. Maybe more interactivity in the first part, or another puzzle or two trying to escape the compound (maybe it’s much larger than those 8 rooms), or have more agency in the final confrontation with the scientist (maybe giving them their just desserts.
Still, it was a neat little game. I enjoyed the premise of it quite a bit.
