My Beautiful Paper Smile (Chapter 1) - Product Reviews

An award-winning atmospheric indie horror game that combines 2D and 3D in a black-and-white environment?!

While ambiguous, the Story this game revolves around is incredibly compelling and thrilling! The high contrast illustrations in this game were eye-catching and the Gameplay was very challenging and thought out! The atmospheric feel of this game helped me immerse myself in the experience of the protagonist.

The toggling between items became a bit tedious. Some items needed to be turned on and off repeatedly. Having to open my inventory every couple of seconds became a tad bothersome. There were also a few minor glitches in the game such as: being able to walk through closed doors and inventory issues.

This game is a diamond in the rough in the regard that it straddles the lines between heart-wrenching and hopeful. This game has no problem establishing its identity outside of the Story or Gameplay. Both the story and gameplay are fulfilling in their way and do not overshadow one another.

For this chapter alone, I believe this game should run around $4.99. This price is based on the average pricing of other chapter-based games of this style on Steam. This length of this chapter is the appropriate length for an episodic indie game.

The Puzzles in this game were fantastically challenging without being *too* frustrating! Of course, everyone likes a challenge in a video game but no one likes to get frustrated. This game did a good job providing context clues in what to do at each portion in the game. There were very minimal sections where I felt I needed more guidance, and the puzzles were very creative and time-sensitive without coming off as tedious.

The Story here was very compelling. There are areas of sorrow, triumph, anger, doubt, and fulfillment. The dialogue in this game is direct without seeming rushed. There is also a modest but adequate number of characters as well. The game does not waste time in informing you of your mission and how to go about it. While the game gets right to the point in your missions and method, it still comes off as very mysterious!

The Gameplay was very easy to get used to for the most part. The movement of my character was very fluid and the usage of items was very user-friendly. The only pitfall in this area was the use of one specific item, which has to be used repeatedly - at the rate of every few seconds - and you have to open your inventory to toggle it off and on. The use of this item would have felt less bulky if there were a keyboard command for toggling the item. There were also occasionally closed doors that you could walk through and inventory glitches, such as when my inventory inexplicably changed, or when I would have more of one item than I picked up. I am not sure whether this was an error in the coding or an unexplained part of the game, though I did play an unfinished build. Other than that, the Puzzles and the sneaking in this game was fun and nicely challenging!

The User Interface of this game is well done, however, the game is not controller compatible. It is exclusively to be played with mouse and keyboard, or with controllers that can emulate a mouse and keyboard.

The illustrator of this game did a wonderful job of giving each room and section its own personality and identity. There is a very good balance between how each area looks in the game and how you, the player, can fill in the blanks to how it would look in person. Creating a game with no color that still has a way of not looking repetitive as you move throughout it must have been a great bout, but it was fulfilled beautifully!

This game may be in black and white, but I would not have it any other way! It adds a great sense of individuality to the game. Where the developers could have copied and pasted background items in the game, you can see they hand-drew every last detail. That alone is very impressive. There are a lot of characters that look similar in a very intentional way. The combination of 2D and 3D Graphics in this game was nice as well It felt like the developers put a lot of extra work into the very small details. This game consisted of a lot of cross-hatching, high contrast, and fun animation, striking a great balance between the retro-gaming feel and modern gaming.

The Sound in this game was phenomenal! Some areas included startling sounds but not too jarring and areas that were subtle but not too quiet. The developers also went the extra mile to add audio for the typed-out dialogue. No corners were cut as far as making sure everything in the game that could happen had a unique sound to it.