Published by Thunderful Publishing, developed by Space Lizard Studio and adapted from Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s novel of the same name (I’m kidding, of course), Paper Cut Mansion is one of the interesting independent productions of the end of this year. The production, which is full of places and characters made entirely of paper, begins when a detective named Toby comes to investigate the mansion for the one who gave the game its name. Besides why he came here, he doesn’t remember much about his life prior to his arrival. At this point, your Alone in the Dark and Sanitarium bells may have started to ring for good reasons, because although our game is a Roguelite type game, it is from the horror sauce. With an isometric camera that you can control, we look at the graphics from above, which are pretty nice for those who like it, and eh meh for those who don’t (unfortunately me).
mechanics of paper
When we enter the mansion, the door closes behind us (shock shock shock!) and we start looking for ways to throw ourselves to other floors. There are some unknown NPCs around. Some of them want us to pay for it, they give us medals that increase our basic stats if we do their duty. Some also sell temporary or permanent gains. For example, there is a lawyer brother, he sells weapons and equipment that we will not lose even when we die. In the plague doctor named Ted Crowford, we can get passive bonuses or drugs that give health. We collect the money by examining the surrounding items or by taking down the enemies.
In addition, there are 3 different “parallel dimensions” in the game. These are called the limbic system, the reptilian brain, and the neocortex. Neocortex is the dimension where we can examine objects, but when turning some objects around, ghosts come out of them. We can’t fight the ghosts, we get tired of chasing after us and we need to escape with as little damage as possible until they vanish (assist from Father Papotto is also an option). The reptilian brain, the dimension with lots of enemies, we have to fight a lot in it. The limbic system, on the other hand, is the part we need to explore by warming up on the cold, usually fires near NPCs. We have a separate health bar for each dimension, but in some cases we can take damage to more than one health bar in a single dimension. Also, every dimension moves us around on the same map; The rules just change a little, that’s all.
six layers of paper
Our playground consists of 6 floors and each of these floors has a different theme; At first, yes, we are in a flat mansion, but then our path takes us to places such as the police station and university. In order to get to the next floor, we need to find a talking door and do what they ask of us. Sometimes it wants us to find a key, sometimes it wants us to eliminate the enemies revealed by the crystals scattered on the map. We usually get the key by solving a small puzzle, the solution of this randomly generated puzzle of certain types, like the rest of the map, is again hidden in the surrounding furniture, like gold coins. There is a green moth that accompanies us all the time, and when there is a clue we need to find in a room, it stops flying and lands on the wall and makes a noise.
When we finish one floor, we watch a cutscene that advances the story in a musical atmosphere before we move to the next floor and the controls are handed over to us. We also have a proof board that we fill out as we progress through the game. The story of the game is thus completed like a puzzle as you die and try again and again and progress further. These and similar ideas are nice, but Paper Cut Mansion is not really a game that can use the features of the Roguelite genre in its favor. Turning the surrounding objects around and searching for clues or money takes up a significant part of your game time. Returning to the beginning when you die and checking items one by one in this way are not basic mechanics that work in synergy. Besides, the game’s procedural creation system is seriously not comprehensive enough to differentiate every experience. The types of puzzles are very simple, but they are the type that you find the solution by searching around, not by working your head and solving it. The maps only supposedly change, the enemies you will encounter on each floor are the same.
There’s no need for vagrancy
The exploration part is also not smooth, even if we have a compass it only points north and you feel like the game really needs a minimap. You cannot see the room you are not in, you frequently turn the camera to tinker with things, and as a result of all this, even if the maps do not differ significantly each time, it becomes very easy to get lost in them. All this stretches out the not-so-worthy content of the game in the most boring ways possible. Already, the game’s war mechanics are in the foreground and accordingly, it is not extra enjoyable, so dying and playing the same places from the beginning seriously harms the game experience. On top of all that, if you think that the game is killing you in very cheap ways, you start to get nervous. For example, when I came to the third floor, I saw a dungeon door. Since it was my job to explore and play everywhere, I plunged into it, and my character’s health in the Neocortex dimension (Dread Bar) began to decline rapidly. On top of that, my character’s controls went astray, I couldn’t turn my back and leave the place as I came. Interestingly, during that game, the lawyer NPC selling permanent upgrades did not appear on any of the maps. Result: I died and was sent to the beginning without making any progress in terms of developing our character. If you don’t run away quickly, let me not start with the one-shot part of some traps. Every time you reach a new floor, you encounter new tricks that will keep your interest alive, but dying and starting over seriously undermines that interest.
On top of that, my character’s controls went astray, I couldn’t turn my back and leave the place as I came. Interestingly, during that game, the lawyer NPC selling permanent upgrades did not appear on any of the maps. Result: I died and was sent to the beginning without making any progress in terms of developing our character. If you don’t run away quickly, let me not start with the one-shot part of some traps. Every time you reach a new floor, you encounter new tricks that will keep your interest alive, but dying and starting over seriously undermines that interest. On top of that, my character’s controls went astray, I couldn’t turn my back and leave the place as I came. Interestingly, during that game, the lawyer NPC selling permanent upgrades did not appear on any of the maps. Result: I died and was sent to the beginning without making any progress in terms of developing our character. If you don’t run away quickly, let me not start with the one-shot part of some traps. Every time you reach a new floor, you encounter new tricks that will keep your interest alive, but dying and starting over seriously undermines that interest. If you don’t run away quickly, I won’t even start with the one-shot part of some traps. Every time you reach a new floor, you encounter new tricks that will keep your interest alive, but dying and starting over seriously undermines that interest. If you don’t run away quickly, let me not start with the one-shot part of some traps. Every time you reach a new floor, you encounter new tricks that will keep your interest alive, but dying and starting over seriously undermines that interest. Paper Cut Mansion is a game that offers us a nice story with its beautiful visuals and narrative style, but tries to be a Roguelite and squeezes itself in the heel. In addition to the design problems of the game, there is also a serious lack of polish; On the PC, the settings are extremely barren and have one of the things I’m most nervous about in life, control schemes that cannot be changed. If you’re making a game for PC in 2022 and you didn’t bother to create a proper control scheme for the keyboard and mouse, at least make the controls customizable and we’ll handle it ourselves, but no… Paper Cut Mansion has often been a production that discouraged me from gaming.
