Paperbound

Dissident Logic’s upcoming Paperbound capitalizes on the recent popularity of local multiplayer arena battle titles like TowerFall and Samurai Gunn. The twist here is that the arenas are based on literary classics like A Journey to the Center of the Earth and Dante’s Inferno and it has a neat ability to flip the gravity for your character whenever you want. We recently got the chance to go hands-on to see how the game stacks up with others in the genre.

Every attack in Paperbound kills in one hit, so you always need to be constantly moving and wary of your opponents’ positions. At the start of every life, you are armed with your basic melee weapon, often a pencil or sword, and a scissor and an ink bomb to throw at your opponents. While scissors fly in a straight line and can be picked up off the ground if you miss your target, you only have one ink bomb that you throw in an arc that explodes. If you aren’t careful with your ink bombs you can be caught and killed in your own explosion.

The most exciting mechanic is the ability to flip gravity which you can do at any time with no restraint. When you tap the gravity button you rapidly fly away from the ground and whatever you touch becomes the new floor. If you are standing on the ground you’ll fall upwards, and if you are running alongside a wall or on the side of a planet, you’ll fall horizontally. This really opens up the arenas because it allows you to strike your opponents from any angle. You can bait and confuse your opponents by reversing your own gravity in midair to hang out in the air indefinitely or retreat from danger.

There are sixteen characters to choose from and five of those characters are guest characters from other indie games. The eleven original characters are largely inspired by the five novels, but the characters I gravitated towards the most were the two generic stick figures since they stood in stark contrast to the more colorful characters. As for the guests, you can expect characters like Juan from Guacamelee and Captain Viridian from VVVVVV. All 16 characters have identical stats so you don’t have to worry about balancing.

In a basic deathmatch you not only need to reach the target amount of kills, but you also need to jump in a small portal that opens up to secure victory. Claiming victory is always the most exciting part of each match. When I was playing with A.I. bots, a welcome feature I was surprised to see, the first half of a match wouldn’t be very stressful as I was easily the first one to make the kill quota again and again. Once the portal began to open up though, all bets were off as the A.I. would target me with brutal precision. Matches can drag on at this point since the moment the leader is killed the portal closes and won’t reopen again until another person pulls ahead. Considering how aggressive the A.I. is, it always felt like a triumph when I finally jumped into the portal.

The dynamics of the matches change dramatically against actual people. The first half of the match becomes more intense as you try to read what each player is going to do. Considering humans don’t work as well together and might actually be killing each other still when the portal opens up, the second half of the match is far more reasonable than playing with A.I.

Other modes include Survival, Long Live The King, and Capture The Quill (the latter is exclusive to team matches) but the most interesting wrinkles you can throw into each match are based on what levels you choose. The 18 levels span five classic pieces of literature and each has a wildly different layout than the rest. The Book of Fire, based off The Book of Five Rings, takes place in a Japanese dragon’s eyeball whose pupil constantly rotates. The Pages of Pain, inspired by Dante’s Inferno, has nine small planetoids in the center and all four walls of the arena are covered in lava making it dangerous to make any sudden moves.

Some levels like The Labyrinth and The Book of Void (pictured above) make great use of the gravity mechanic because the players are constantly changing their positions to attack from different angles. The Book of Void in particular is absolute chaos since there are only three small platforms to share, but you can warp from one side of the screen to the next when you invert gravity and trick people by reversing gravity indefinitely to hang out in the air.

I had a great time playing Paperbound both with A.I. and with friends. The good news is you don’t have to wait long to try out the frantic action for yourself. Paperbound is set to arrive on March 31.