Paperville Panic brings an adorable catastrophe to HTC Vive
At the PAX AUS Indie Showcase we're left asking, "Why would someone build a town out of paper and set it on fire?!" Because VR.
- Webby Award Winner (Best Video Host, 2021), Webby Nominee (Podcasts, 2021), Gold Telly (Documentary Series, 2021), Silver Telly (Video Writing, 2021), W3 Award (Best Host, 2020), Australian IT Journalism Awards (Best Journalist, Best News Journalist 2017)
"Paperville Panic" sets you loose on a paper town with nothing but an axe and a water pistol.
Some people just want to watch the world burn. And now VR is giving them a front row seat.
Welcome to Paperville -- an adorable paper town made out of craft supplies and inhabited by innocent paper-bag people. But some jerk has set Paperville on fire, and it's your job to save the day.
This is the world of "Paperville Panic," the brainchild of Australian indie VR gaming studio, Ultimerse. Built for Vive and set to launch on Steam this month, Paperville Panic is the first game out of the 11-person Ultimerse team, and it's cute as a button.
As the only fire fighter in Paperville, you're given an axe to chop your way through the burning rubble (or, more accurately, cardboard) and a water pistol to put out the inferno. You're guided by a very Aussie-sounding narrator, fighting fire bosses with water balloons and saving paper bag people who have been tied up and left to die. Oh, the origami!
Like The American Dream -- a VR game we spotted at PAX Australia last year which gives you guns for hands in 1950s America -- Paperville Panic is a good example of a simple concept done well on VR. While HTC has pitched Vive on the promise of giving gamers a totally advanced and immersive gaming experience, it's great to see these sorts of indie games starting to appear on the platform to offer something different.
And if there's one place where the cute, weird and adorably morbid world of gaming is on display, it's the Indie Showcase at PAX.
Stay tuned to CNET for more news out PAX AUS.