Review: Paper Cut Mansion

Paper Cut Mansion was received for free for review purposes.

Introduction

Paper Cut Mansion (2022) is a game oozing with creativity, style and charm. Its crafty and creative aesthetics lend well to an experience that is memorable. However, there are areas, specifically the gameplay, where it can feel as though it has been let down.

Art Design

The art design and stylisation of Paper Cut Mansion is nothing short of incredible. The entire game being based around the handcrafted nature of its assets ensures the game is distinct, with the intentionally messy nature of the titular mansion aiding the horror atmosphere perfectly.

Development of these assets is also unique and a creative tribulation that should be respected. By literally drawing the assets by hand onto paper and using Blender to ‘fold’ and ‘glue’ them into the wanted shapes, the game feels incredibly realistic and as if the player is controlling a diorama.

By using such a distinct and pleasing art style, Paper Cut Mansion ensures that its visuals will never truly age. The assets that are used are timeless in design ensuring this game will be as visually stunning in 10 years as it is now- an issue that many other games in the modern era face.

Paper Cut Mansion has a charming art design that extends to every aspect of the game

This intricate attention to detail is the game’s strongest asset

Moreover, the animation of these the game’s assets are a beautiful blend of fluid and stiff. The fluidity of the animations give a sense of the characters being alive, being dynamic and inventive in the workarounds of their limitations. These limitations therefore, the necessity to have all movements be realistic for cardboard and other craft materials, become something that enhance the visual design of the game and allow it to define itself.

This intricate attention to detail is the game’s strongest asset. It immerses the player into its world in ways that other games could only hope of achieving. Managing this while also maintaining an interesting stylisation that will endure for decades, allows Paper Cut Mansion to stand above other games and be memorable for its aesthetics alone.

Gameplay

Being rogue-like, Paper Cut Mansion is a game that utilises procedural generation to build the maps the player explores in each run. This is supposed to ensure that each run feels unique and allows the player to hone their skills over time rather than becoming reliant on learning the level design.

Paper Cut Mansion is a game that suffers from being rogue-like however.

Unfortunately, there is not enough content within the game to truly make use of the genre’s strengths. Puzzles are often repeated between runs and the way the game generates its rooms are often cluttered and unintuitive. This creates issues where the player begins to notice the repeating content not long after starting the game, forming a game that player’s will quickly put down.

While core gameplay is fun, its general structure suffers

While the way the content of the game is structured is flawed, the actual gameplay loop is solid. Having the player explore three states of the mansion by entering rifts and specialising each form of the mansion to a different task (exploring, combat, and puzzle solving) builds a nice variety of gameplay that can be focused on in different ways.

If Paper Cut Mansion were a game that utilised pre-built levels specifically designed around the different modes of gameplay and player abilities then it would be much more fun and intuitive. The foundations of truly engaging gameplay are present within the game, however they must be realised and honed before reaching their fullest potential.

Sound Design

A large part of establishing the atmosphere within a game centred in the horror genre is with expert sound design. Sound design is crucial when evoking feelings of dread and terror within a player. Low rumbling tones and sudden, unexplainable noises held create the sense of anxiety that allows the genre to effectively do its job.

The general sound effects used within Paper Cut Mansion are extremely effective at their intended purpose. Every aspect of the world creates a sound of paper rustling when interacted with, ensuring that immersion to the world is maximised and the world truly feels as though it is made of paper. Moreover, the constant creaking of the mansion and the noises the objects within it passively make forms an atmosphere that leaves the player uneasy and as if something may suddenly occur at any time.

The sound design greatly contributes to the game’s atmosphere

The only fault that can be found in the sound design is the way the game informs the player that there is nothing left to do in one of the three forms of the mansion. For example if the player has already found all pieces of ‘memory’ in the mansion’s exploratory form then a voice will tell them they have to move on. While this is a useful feature to help encourage player progression the voice utilised, one that is loud and bombastic, is not in line with the rest of the game’s nature.

Performance

For the most part Paper Cut Mansion runs well on the Nintendo Switch.

There are no performance issues in the actual gameplay with everything running smoothly and there no glitches being noticeable.

Cutscenes face some issues with frame drops during high intensity scenes, such as those involving rapid camera movements. However, this is likely due to the hardware of the Nintendo Switch more than anything else due to the game reportedly not having this issue on other platforms.

The motion control suffers from having an incredibly high sensitivity

Finally, some note must be made of the game’s controls as motion control is used throughout the game when rotating items that the player is inspecting. The motion control suffers from having an incredibly high sensitivity which makes inspecting the items precisely to be obtuse and tedious. Moreover, this control scheme is completely redundant when faced with the fact that the control stick has the exact same functionality and is more intuitive to use.

This would not be a serious issue if it were not for the fact that the controls of the game cannot be adjusted (or at least there is no obvious way to do this). This hinders accessibility to the game and is hopefully something that will be adjusted.

Rating

6/10

Conclusion

Paper Cut Mansion is a game that feels as though it is fighting itself. Its gameplay is genuinely fun and engaging but the way the game is structured around it is incredibly flawed and severely limits the fun that can be had with the game over extended periods of playtime. Despite this, the game remains charming and memorable for the absolutely gorgeous atmosphere and world it creates, as well as its fantastically built and considered aesthetical choices.