One of the main goals that were in mind when Virtual Reality was created is to visit a world and reality that you could never see in real life. Pixel Reef has created Paper Beast, a game that is the very definition of this main goal Virtual Reality was created for. While the world the game takes place in is similar to our own in a few ways, the creatures that live within it are all made of paper. Mixing the paper-based creatures with an altered version of our reality brings a unique realm for players to visit.

Story

We are met with another journey that doesn’t seem to tell us a story yet is chock-full of little details that express that there is a story. As far as I can tell, you are playing through a simulation that is closer to a reality than it is being a fictional adventure and so everything you do in the game is having an impact on the actual environment and creatures you are thought to only be pretending to affect with your actions.

Gameplay

I’ll be honest with you; this game has quite a few moments that I believe were unintentionally scary. The whole way that the game begins had me on edge until pretty much chapter 2. I don’t want to spoil anything, but do note that these creatures are not going to harm you and the experience the game provides is meant to be a pleasant and calming one while challenging your observation and deductive reasoning skills.

Once you hop into the world you will find that you can’t move. This is so you get your first steps at observing creatures and events going on in the world around you. It won’t be long before your big, somewhat intimidating friend will bring you an orb that will allow you to teleport. He does get right up in your face and this was one of the first moments that unnerved me at first before I realized he was just being helpful and friendly.

Now all of your movement is based on the teleportation option that we are all used to from the early days of VR gameplay. With this you can start exploring the area and making your way to the first set of creatures that you will find all over the place. These are also the first creatures that you can pick up completely and move around yourself. You can feed these guys the little paper balls and get your first experience moving the creatures around yourself here before moving forward.

Along your journey you will come across a bunch of different creatures and each will serve their own purpose as well as have their own way of interacting with the environment. You will be pretty much shown a problem or end goal without being told what that is and it will be up to you to solve your way through to fix the problem or complete the objective before you can move forward. An example of a problem is like when your big beast friend needs water and falls before he reaches some so you need to get the water to him. An example of an end goal is like one of the small friendlies are standing near a tree and up on the mountain, you find a handful of friendlies unable to cross the ridge due to the high wind meaning you need to figure out a way to get all of the same creatures to the tree to continue.

You can pretty much think of this game as a silent puzzle type, but this time in a 3D environment and experienced through virtual reality. There are objectives and one main way to do it, but even if you do it a different way the goal is that the objective is completed before you can move on.

Other than the campaign mode, you will soon unlock the sandbox mode. This mode will be pretty empty if you don’t find the colorful orbs throughout the campaign though so be sure to pick those up as you find them so you can unlock more pieces to work within sandbox mode. In this mode, you will be able to create the land to be set up any way you want including plant life, insects, creatures, weather, storms, and even the placement of the sun. This mode is a great way for players to get a better understanding of each creature’s actions and how they affect the environment. However, I could never find a way to shape the terraformation of the land itself no matter what options I chose from and so it seems that the current form of the sandbox mode makes you work with the slab they give you and nothing more.

Visuals

I love how they used the simulation idea further by having clouds and storm aspects shaped like numbers and even had it set up where it was possible to find things like water turned into a bunch of H2O’s sitting or flying around. The landscape and creatures blended well to create a world of its own and it really felt like a different world in there.

Audio

For the most part, the game is very quite. All you hear is the sound of the environment and creatures around you, which can get unsettling for some. This did create a high level of immersion to the experience, but at the cost of the atmosphere’s overall energy that the game gives off.

Replayability

Other than wanting to hang out with your creatures and playing in the sandbox mode, there isn’t much reason to play the game again. The biggest replayability aspect was the sandbox mode, but I feel like they made it much too limiting to be something worth using for a long period of time. After throwing a bunch of insects, creatures, plant life, and playing with the toys like weather storms and anti-gravity, it became dull to only work with the one slab.

What It Could Have Done Better

Picking up with what I was saying about the sandbox mode in the last segment, I just wish they gave a lot more freedom to that mode to really let players create a world with our paper creature friends. After going through the story mode, I was ready to spend some serious time creating a giant meadow with a mountain reaching the snow caps on one side and a desert on the other, but what I got was a single slab of pure desert that I could pretty much spray paint into rock instead. No extending, some growth options, but mainly just a single area to work with and heavy limitations. I couldn’t even use the God mode properly as it only lets you go up in the sky and look down which it would have been easier and nicer to work with the sandbox slab in front of me, kind of like a table, instead. This is something that can be worked on and fixed, which I sincerely hope they take the time to expand the opportunities that their sandbox mode can provide to the players.

Verdict

Paper Beast is a mystifying journey! I enjoyed the story mode from start to end. Despite having its oddities and being unintentionally unnerving at times, I can’t say that I have experienced anything like what this game has to offer anywhere else. The creativity behind its creation is unbound and with just a few tweaks this game could easily have been a perfect score. A journey worth taking for those with a mind open to experiencing a unique, undefined reality.