“I should warn you: Nothing really dies here.”
It doesn’t take much to hook me when it comes to games, admittedly. When Paper Bleed was introduced to me via the Steam Next Fest, with its rough illustrations and crude, but charmingly grotesque creatures jerkily roaming around a bright white void, I couldn’t help but give it a shot. There’s something here that pulled me in. But what was it exactly?
Developed and self-published by Chusketeer, Paper Bleed is a crusty indie game that seemed to strike a nostalgic chord for me. After all, some of my favorite horror games from my youth shared a few similar qualities with Paper Bleed: they’re all solo efforts, they’re mostly limited to adventure-style gameplay, and they all feature an unexpected amount of over-the-top violence and viscera. But was the demo for it worth checking out? And does it give a good idea of what to expect when the full version eventually debuts? Let’s find out.
Puzzling and Punishing
Paper Bleed wastes absolutely no time in getting started. All that’s made immediately known to you is that you’re a presumably lonely girl bound to a decrepit basement by your wrists. With a loose pair of scissors, you manage to cut your bindings and free yourself from the dank room, only to find yourself navigating a house of horrors in search of answers. What’s going on? Who are you, even? And why are all the other girls here twisted into disgusting, sadistic monsters? A faint feeling of familiarity fills your thoughts as you make a terrifying discovery — nobody ever really dies here.
There’s a vacantness to Paper Bleed that I think really creates a kind of uncomfortable, but intriguing atmosphere. Cutscenes are seemingly stitched together from scanned drawings, switching aspect ratios with every other frame and featuring only the most essential of sounds to convey what’s happening. Music is scarce, only accompanying unsettling reveals and the pitch-black aftermath of death scenes. Even the world you inhabit is black, white, and red all over, often so with equal parts crude brushwork and eerily real-looking sprites. It’s rough, yes. But it’s refreshing.
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Paper Bleed‘s gameplay, however, is a lot more traditional for better or worse. It’s a point-and-click adventure game with some tangible horror elements. You’ll move throughout the house and the surrounding woods by just clicking around, all while grabbing and using items you can find throughout. Clicking an item in your inventory allows you to use it on other things, too. Need to create a distraction? Place some meat on a plate. Locked door? Maybe you can unlock it with a loose paper clip. There are some occasional breaks from the routine, but a vast majority of what you’ll be doing in the demo (and presumably the full game) falls into this.
You’ll be doing a lot of it. In fact, you’ll be doing a lot of the same stuff over and over again. The exact same stuff you’ve already done.
It remains to be seen whether or not Paper Bleed will shake this up in the full game, but the demo lacks the ability to save your progress. The demo itself isn’t all that long once you figure out what to do and when. But it does become a little annoying when Paper Bleed has one of the point-and-click genre’s biggest pitfalls.
Death will be frequent in Paper Bleed. Monsters of all kinds are roaming all around the house you’re exploring, and unless you have fast hands and a good sense of positioning, you’ll be facing a premature death through a handful of grisly cutscenes. That also means you’re sent all the way back to the beginning of the demo. It’s not a terrible thing in of itself, but after a handful of deaths, repeating the exact same series of steps over and over does occasionally get on your nerves. As punishing as the Elvira adventure games were, they at least let you save as many times as you wanted, whenever you wanted.
Though I love the hand-drawn visuals too, I did find myself occasionally getting lost. A ceiling hatch that leads to the attic somehow evaded my attention several times over until I finally caught it sometime after grabbing the umbrella, for instance. It’s strange, actually — a lot of the puzzles here are actually fairly logical and make plenty of sense, but it’s just a matter of finding the right items to actually engage with them. It’s admittedly hard to tell what’s a friend and what’s a foe, as well, though that’s easily remedied with some basic trial and error.
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Should You Play Paper Bleed?
Is Paper Bleed perfect? Well, if we’re going by the demo, I’d say no. But that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to completely write the game off.
If Paper Bleed does give you an opportunity to more readily save your progress in the full release, I’d be more than happy to give it my full recommendation. There’s a crudeness here that hides a level of uncomfortable horror that I’ve legitimately not felt in years. Is it as pretty as something like Ib or The Witch’s House, or maybe even the white chamber? Absolutely not. But I actually kinda prefer it that way. The game’s trailer promises even more offbeat surprises that I’m readily looking forward to as well. If you’re willing to forgive some of its faults, you’ll probably find something really enjoyable here.
You can check out the demo for Paper Bleed on Steam and itch.io.
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