My Beautiful Paper Smile

My Beautiful Paper Smile drops players into a dark, captivating world of masks, monsters, and malice seemingly torn straight from a mad poet’s notebook, though its many memorable shocks can’t entirely distract from its frustrating gameplay elements and deceptively simplistic narrative.

My Beautiful Paper Smile Chapters 1 and 2 drop you into a world where children are forced to be happy, and punished for feeling anything else. It may unnerve some people, so keep that in mind. The gameplay is simple, but some sections can be annoying and feel unfair. You're left on a cliffhanger, but the final chapters will be released later on.

As a story, My Beautiful Paper Smile is an 8, maybe even a 9 out of 10, especially if you’re patient enough to put up with a tale which is mostly revealed and cliffhangers disguised as a moving plot. But there are long stretches where the story takes a back seat for you to wander, and while the aesthetic is good, the game isn’t open-world and looking the part isn’t enough to carry it. My Beautiful Paper Smile is an ideal Let’s Play game, in that it’s probably much more fun watching someone else play than it is to do it yourself. One for the horror enthusiasts, but I don’t see it reaching across the aisles.