Paperknife FOR MAC

Paperknife is a cartoon-like exploration game in which you are immersed into a mysterious beige environment (either a psychiatric children’s hospital or a private clinic), where you play the role of Dr. Joanna Dowell, a child psychiatrist, as she understand her patients’ psychological problems .

Paperknife’s gameplay is quite straightforward though it can be a bit confusing at first, but, once you play it for a while and understand the game’s basics, it becomes easy to get a handle on things.

The controls reflect the game’s simplicity as you control Dr. Joanna’s movements through the maze with the help of W,A,S,D keys, make her run using the SHIFT key, zoom-in with SPACE, and change the perspective using your Mac’s keyboard arrow keys.

The action revolves around Dr. Joanna's journey through a maze-like map of corridors and her conversations with her patients. The written words that appear on the walls represent the conversation between the child and the main character, and it can prove to be quite interesting and complex.

As you wonder around, new corridors will appear, thus analyzing and gathering the information displayed on the walls is important for deciding which corridor to take next in order to ask new and relevant questions.

Paperknife’s storyline often refers to traumas and anxieties, and, at certain stages, the feeling that you are really talking to a sad and defenseless child becomes quite poignant.

In order to play Paperknife, you must rely on your intuition and basic knowledge of child psychology, because there are certain stages in which the child’s anxiety rises and certain decisions must be made to successfully continue the conversation.

A worth mentioning feature is the game’s soundtrack, that really does a good job of immersing the player and manages to create a spooky, and, at times, tense atmosphere, all depending on your state of mind and feelings.

Taking into consideration all of the above, Paperknife features a good dose of complexity and has the potential to keep you entertained for hours on end despite its simple gameplay, as you have to rely on your memory, empathy, and child psychology knowledge to really enjoy it.