Paper Beast in the test: a world of origami

"Paper Beast" is a relaxing PSVR exclusive game from the pen of Eric Crahi, the creator of the Amiga cult game "Another World": a classic from the early nineties that some Amiga veterans may still be familiar with. The parallels to the VR adventure, which is available from today, are interesting. in the PlayStation Store because the polygon creatures already interacted with each other in "Another World" and speak their own language.

Observe

How it came about: A few months ago, we met the development team at Gamescom 2019 and spoke to Eric maintain. We have now been able to test the PSVR game for you in detail.

"Paper Beast" plays like an explorative art game with origami creatures. However, there is a main task in each section of the game that needs to be recognised and solved. With grabbing and teleporting, the controls are kept to an absolute minimum, as it is essentially about observing and interacting with paper monsters and natural elements such as wind, water and snow. Spherical music plays in the background, which fits in well with the utopian planetary world.

Per aspera ad astra

As in "Another World", the paper creatures, ice beetles and crabs all speak their own animal language and seem to communicate with each other. However, this is not actually a large open world, but rather individual game levels, which in turn are divided into short chapters. With the exception of a few, the puzzles are kept rather simple. In order to recognise the obstacles and how your paper cutlet companions will get you to your next destination, you sometimes have to pause for a moment and take in your surroundings.

Tricky passages

As an example, we'll spoil just one section of the game that I got stuck on for a while. Once you had to guide white paper dragons to the other side of a mountain in a polar desert. However, your main adversary, an icy polar wind, keeps blowing the light paper dogs back. Heavy armoured turtles also waddle back and forth on the hilltop, but the fierce wind is no match for them. However, it took me several minutes and several restarts of the game section before I figured out how to get the heavy animals to the other side of the mountain and attach the paper kites to them.

Unique to "Paper Beast" are funny elements such as black cassette tape monsters or sprinkling balloon rides. Sometimes you simply have to follow simple objects such as hot lava stones, melt an icy surface or show subservient burrowing beetles the way with a "sand fruit". There doesn't seem to be a real story. The atmospheric changes in the environment from gloomy to cheerful as well as dystopian ice deserts and funny scenes such as bizarre animal marches keep you entertained and increase your curiosity for the next stage of the game.

Beautiful art scenes to sink into

In terms of playing time, you can get through "Paper Beast" in around four hours, depending on how long you get stuck at certain points. Whether I would even play the console VR title again at a later date is a good question. It actually only has a few places where it gets a bit repetitive and completing a passage to cross obstacles can take a few minutes. I probably wouldn't dig "Paper Beast" out again in the next few weeks, but I would certainly play it again at a later date because I find some of the music intoxicating and the game with the beautiful origami creatures looks to me like a work of art that has been worked on for several years.