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Escape Your Cardboard Prison in Roguelike ‘Paper Cut Mansion’
UK-based dev Space Lizard Studio today revealed the trailer for their upcoming roguelike-puzzler, Paper Cut Mansion. Drawing inspiration from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, the game’s “papercraft” aesthetic is certainly striking. Of course, looks aren’t everything, as the game also borrows from the bleakness of titles like Limbo, creating an atmosphere that’s unique as it is creepy.
The story goes that you’re trapped inside a paper prison of a mansion, where you must solve riddles, tackle puzzles and battle the mansion’s inhabitants in an attempt to find out just how and why you’re there.
The idea for the game came from team member Gabriele Caruso, who was in the process of moving home, and was surrounded by cardboard boxes. “The emptiness of the new house, and being surrounded by cardboard boxes, made me think that being alone with them was one of the most terrifying things,” says Caruso. “It was like a maze. This is how we came up with the concept, the fear of the darkness of the unknown in a cardboardish atmosphere.”
To achieve the art style, Space Lizard created real-life cardboard models, and then scanned them into 3D modelling software, blemishes and all. It’s these defects that the team says gives Paper Cut Mansion its unique and unsettling atmosphere.
While the game is currently in production, the team hopes to have a crowdfunding campaign announced later this year to add more features and quality to the game. For more screenshots and info, head over to the game’s official site.
The best part about engaging with collaborative genre fiction on the internet is that anyone can get in on the action, with worldwide accessibility often resulting in absurd story beats that wouldn’t be possible if any single person was responsible for the entire narrative. And while Kane Parsons’ Backrooms film is definitely the young filmmaker’s own unique take on the infamous creepypasta, it’s fun to see other creators join the Backrooms sandbox now that the big screen adaptation is getting ready for a record-shattering opening weekend.
As if cleverly timed releases like Puppet Combo’s The Backrooms game weren’t enough (not to mention that Scary Movie poster poking fun at Parsons’ flick), McDonald’s official social media accounts have now released an analog horror video of their own celebrating the liminal terrors of the McRooms – complete with a familiar purple surprise at the end of the footage.
While it’s funny enough to see the world’s most recognizable Fast Food giant engage with internet-borne Found Footage thrills seemingly out of the blue, the video is actually referencing a long-running gag among the Backrooms fandom where creators jokingly talk about there being a fully functional McDonald’s restaurant hidden somewhere in level 0 of the infamous liminal labyrinth.
Now, would it be too much to hope for a moist-carpet-flavored McShake to tie in with the film?
Backrooms is now playing only in theaters from A24.
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