Hirogami review — A beautifully crafted adventure that misses the mark

We have had a few renditions of origami/paper game-style visuals, the most prevalent being the beloved Paper Mario series.This aesthetic allows for interesting gameplay like shimmying through gaps when you’re flattened and folding yourself into objects, like a plane to traverse large gaps. If you’re familiar with these games, then Hirogami may be up your street in terms of gameplay. That’s not to detract from Hirogami’s uniqueness; it’s just nice to look back on inspiration and what’s been done with the genre before. This game takes origami and blends it with platforming and real-time combat, which is a mix that works well on paper but falters in execution.

Hirogami tells the story of a calamity that’s been brought about by Blights, glitches that distort terrain, spawn black ball minions, and take over the animal inhabitants. Blending tradition and modernity is a fun twist for this game and works aesthetically well. These Blights have terrorized your town and forced its villagers to flee, so it’s up to you and a couple of others to restore the shrines and their goddesses in order to stop the Blight. From the start, your character, Hiro, claims he is no fighter but instead a performer who uses his special folding forms to bring joy to others. However, these powers have been taken away, and it seems it’s all hands on deck, so get shifting. You’ll team up with the village elder, who will act as a hub, and the callous Shiori, who is the village’s warrior.

Hirogami’s levels are less isolated spaces, rather than subsequent levels that you beat in portions. Some worlds will have one or two levels, whilst others have three or four. Each level, your main objective is to restore the crane shrine, but what you’ll notice is that Hirogami’s levels have a bunch of optional conditions you can meet. These can be simple, like gathering 3,000 paper – which is the game’s currency – taking no damage, or finding 4/4 hidden chests. I didn’t have time to run back through levels, but it seems like the game offers a lot of replayability and challenge if you’re seeking it. However, a word of caution: each challenge will supply the player with a golden crane, and the endgame will require a certain number of these, so try to complete a few every time you go into a level to save time at the end.

In terms of platforming and level design, Hirogami can stumble a bit, as directing Hiro onto a platform can be quite annoying. Using Hiro, and later the frog ability that allows you to jump higher and farther, it seems like you have to be quite precise on where you land, or you’ll end up smacking against the edge of the platform or slipping off it altogether. This isn’t helped by Hirogami’s forced perspective, as I found myself not being able to accurately judge where I needed to land, especially when I was gliding in my paper form. An even more annoying layer on top of this is that sometimes I just couldn’t see gaps, so I’d plummet and find my ‘no damage challenge’ was over in a blink of an eye. Unfortunately, these problems are woven throughout Hirogami, and despite a relatively short run time of about 6 hours, I didn’t find myself wanting to go back to previous levels to unlock more challenges.

The other half of Hirogami’s gameplay is combat. You start off with just your normal Hiro form, where you can slash enemies with your fan and perform other special attacks. However, Hirogami’s main gimmick is its folded forms, comprising 3 animals: a frog, an armadillo, and a gorilla. Each has unique powers, like the aforementioned long frog jump. Unfortunately, these powers are not equally useful. You’ll find yourself switching animal forms frequently to traverse levels, which is fine, but sometimes it can feel a little clunky. For example, I had to use my frog form to jump on falling platforms, but at the end I had to transform into an ape to climb a vine. There was a very small window to change forms, so I fell a few times. In terms of combat, despite all forms having specific attacks, I found myself always using the armadillos’ rush attack, which puts me in a ball and rams into enemies at high speed. You’ll get enemy types that require another animal’s form, but it felt like more of an annoyance than a strategy. Once I found all three animal forms, I found myself never using Hiro’s form, except to trigger crane shrines. The combat system comes off lacking polish, as it feels very basic and a tad clunky at times.

Other gameplay features include an ornament system in which you find blueprints, gather materials, and ask your village elder to craft them. Most of these seem mandatory and unlock as you progress in the game, but some will be hidden treasures to find in levels. You also get collectables in the form of relics, which are also hidden around levels. These just present some neat screenshots of the game.

To Hirogami’s merit, however, it is visually stunning and has its own unique look and feel to it. I especially loved the character designs, which were elaborate and detailed but still had unique silhouettes in their character portraits. This also stretches into the animals you encounter, but I wish they added more types. Even if they were just neutral and non-interactable. The world just feels a bit empty when you encounter the same 3 animals over and over again.