Game Reviews

Paper Titans

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iOS
| Paper Titans
Get
Paper Titans
|
iOS
| Paper Titans

There's no getting away from the fact that Paper Titans is gorgeous. From the menus to the papercraft characters you can actually print out and make, every part of the game's presentation screams quality.

It's a shame that the gameplay doesn't quite live up to the spectacle the art-style creates, and while there are some clever ideas here they never play spark with enough force to catch, leaving a solid but never surprising puzzling adventure.

Cut out

The game is all about collecting envelopes and stars. You're given control of a set number of cardboard robots and need to figure out how to get them where they need to go. Only one kind of robot can grab things, while the others act as contraptions to get him past obstacles.

Some act as bumpers to let you reach higher parts of the level, others explode when they're stood in the right place, and others still let you use a jet pack or raise platforms to get to previously inaccessible areas.

Every time you unlock a new character or piece of the story you fold it into shape, manipulating a net with guidance from the game to create them from scratch. Once a character is built you can use them to solve the simple puzzles the game is made up of.

You move your robots by drawing a line from their feet to where you want them to go. The three-dimensional levels aren't ideally suited to the task, but it's usually not too difficult to end up where you want to.

There are always markers to show where your robots need to stop to become useful, but you need to work out the order in which you can snaffle all the stars. You can finish a level by grabbing the envelope, but unlocking all the game's secrets means collecting all the stars.

Creased

While there is a slight challenge to finishing each of the levels with full stars, you never feel taxed or stretched. And while having different robots is an interesting idea, mechanically they're rarely more than the sum of their parts.

Paper Titans looks stunning, and it entertains to a point, but you can't help but wish it were a little more exciting, a little more complex, and a little more interesting by the time the end comes around.

Paper Titans

It's certainly a looker, but Paper Titans is a little too shallow once you get past its gorgeous facade
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.