Just what percentage of unacknowledged irony is it that a digital game wants to celebrate paper-based art in the context of a story about combating the “scourge” of digital creatures? If you were serious about this moral issue, Hirogami, you'd actually be stepped on beaten tree cover. I condemn you, imposter! You are one of the electronic creatures you want me to fight. You on the other hand To do Let me turn into an origami armadillo that can roll like a pinball. Here's the announcement trailer.
watch on YouTube
The Steam page explains: “Hirogami is a 3D action platformer inspired by the ancient Japanese art of origami (paper folding).” “Everything you encounter is designed to convey the physical, often fragile, natural world of paper, amidst a story woven with wistful intrigue.”
You play Hiro, a valiant piece of paper with the ability to transform into a tall jumper, a ground-stomping frog, a block-pulling monkey, and more. Your mission is to “purge the mentally warped inhabitants” of a world whose “delicate natural balance” has been shaken by the disease in question.
“Explore every nook and cranny and discover all the hidden secrets of the world,” the Steam blurb continues. “Turn into a piece of paper to ride fiery updrafts or slide under deadly traps. Or transform into a paper airplane to scale perilous chasms. This origami world is a fragile place, and you'll need your wits to protect it. To blow up the Cataclysm, Hiro must Use your paper fan or use your paper powers to beat, punch or poison them.”
Oh, if only we disruptive journalists had been given access to such “papery powers” back when broadband was becoming ubiquitous and everyone was screaming “print is dead.” Give it a few hundred years and people will be making platform games that wistfully intrigue about the old and forgotten art form of the video game magazine.
Picture it: Playing as the Masthead, a wet composite of Adobe InDesign sketches, you must defeat the encroaching forces of the internet by transforming into an Official Xbox Magazine (combat option, because we always put guns on the cover) or Official Nintendo. Magazine (for platforming of course) or an Edge (for weakening enemies, because after all 10/10 of all other publications is an Edge 6/10 etc). But they won't have the internet forces to fight back, because it turns out that when they said “print is dead” they neglected to add that “internet business models are built on quicksand.”
A few last looks at Hirogami; It has a traditional instrumental soundtrack and is produced by Bandai Namco's Singapore team under publishing Kakehashi Games. The “card game” conceit is dated at this point, but the art direction is still pretty polished. I think they missed a trick by not having a mini-game simulating the fold sequence for each incarnation of Hiro – why put them on speed dial if you want to keep those traditions alive? It comes out in 2025.