Mastery is one of those words that gets thrown around when we talk about games. As an interactive medium, games can instill a sense of accomplishment that, while not impossible to convey in non-interactive genres, comes naturally in the form of art with states of failure. If you can fail, it makes sense that you can succeed.
While games aren’t monolithic in the way they’re designed, many games achieve this sense of accomplishment by giving you control of a character who must overcome the challenges they face. Link completing a dungeon. Mario deftly leaping across platforms. And so on. Mastery in these contexts is the triumph of the individual over the world. You win by coming out on top, not succumbing to the harshness of your environment. You win by successfully navigating the world around you. But what if, to succeed, you need more than just individual will? What if you first have to change the world?
Paper trail AND Slidertwo recent puzzle games, both of which require the player to transform the world in order to progress. Before I delve down this argumentative rabbit hole, I want to state that, narratively, neither game is explicitly about “changing the world.” Both feature functional stories whose primary purpose is to set up the gameplay, which in both cases is the star of the show. I wouldn’t call either a “story game.” And yet—if you’ll allow the hackneyed phrase—actions speak louder than words, and in games, mechanics often speak louder than dialogue boxes.
Paper trail could be called a walking simulator if you focus solely on the actions of the main character Paige. Paige just walks. On iOS, where I played, you tap on a part of the screen and she walks there. OK, fine, sometimes she pushes rocks and interacts with other elements. But mostly she walks (slowly).
Real action Paper trail is in the manipulation of the world around Paige. Divided into squares and rectangles, each level Paper trail can be folded by dragging the corners of the page. Underneath each page are modern paths and patterns that can be matched to the top of the page, creating an unbroken path. The trick to each stage is to fold and unfold each page so that Paige can get from one end to the other. Complications, such as pressure plates and dice that must be matched to an identical counterpart, multiply over time, making the mid-game stages an exercise in experimentation and patience. But no matter how many complications the game introduces, what you always do in Paper trail it folds the world into modern shapes and arrangements, creates modern paths from impossible landscapes, makes the world passable where it was once isolated. The world is malleable, and it is up to you how you shape it.
Slider takes a similar approach, but instead of assembling the world, you—well, you can probably guess from the title. Do you like slide puzzles? Those little 3×3 grids of eight blocks that you slide around until you reveal the whole picture? Good, because this is Slider In compact, you don’t look down on the puzzle; you walk around it, shifting the world around you into modern permutations and, in the end, returning it to its original form.
Slider combines aesthetics Protocol, Sub-storylove of non sequiturs and slide puzzles from many games. It’s a charming package, all the more appealing because it’s completely free. You progress through a series of areas, collecting modern tiles to place in slide puzzles, which you can then move to give your character more room to move. Tricks are added over time, such as bioluminescent mushrooms that can only be traversed when activated by a nearby featherlight source, or an area where you rotate tiles instead of moving them. Even more than Paper trail, Slider gives you the feeling that you’re traveling through an interconnected world, but that world is only connected because of your actions.
I played both games right after Arrangeryet another game released in the last few months where moving the world is as significant as moving your character. Reflecting on my experience with each of them, what made them all feel so modern—especially considering the games are in dialogue with each other—was how they challenged me to approach them with a different mindset than I usually bring to the game. Instead of asking, “What do I have in front of me, and how do I surpass it?” I approached all three games with the question, “What do I have in front of me, and how do I change it?”
It may seem like a subtle change of terminology, unworthy of distinction, but I don’t think so. Each of them really represents a radically different philosophy. When you consider the world as something to be surpassed, you sort of accept it as it is. For better or worse, that’s just how it is. So my only role is to do what I can to overcome the obstacles that come my way. But when you ask instead how the world might change, how the world might be transformed, you start approaching problems with a completely different mindset. You start asking if things might be easier if we changed the structure of X to look like Y. You start wondering if modern paths might open up if we just changed our perspective to Z. I’m not trying to be too flashy, but I think games, through their mechanics, have the ability to instill different mindsets in you. What is a game if not a set set of actions handed to you by programmers? What is a game if not a way of seeing, of acting?
Paper trail AND Slider both games are about changing the world. To master them, to beat them, you have to see the world not as something stagnant, unmoving, but as something you can influence for the better. You have to think about mastery in a modern way: to see your environment not as an enemy but as part of a larger puzzle. You have to change the world.
Paper trail was released on May 21 for iOS via Netflix, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Slider was released on July 24 for Windows. We reviewed Paper trail on iOS via Netflix and Slider on Windows via Steam. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. Additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.
