Papercut Art Gallery-Nature

Paper-Cut Art Gallery is a simple puzzle game, reminiscent of the Glass Masquerade games. Featuring 32 nature-themed levels and simple controls, it is a great little game to relax to.

Pros

• Gorgeous nature theme
• 32 levels
• Simple mouse controls
• Affordable $3AUD price tag

Cons

• Repetitive, unusually loud sound effects
• Unable to skip to later levels

If you would like to see more reviews written by me, please follow my curator page and help support my work Cookie Reviews.

Gameplay

If you have played, or know anything about the Glass Masquerade games, this is nearly the same, except it uses paper instead of glass. Use the different sized pieces to fit them together to form an image. There are 32 levels, but they can only be played in order. Ambient sound effects will play that match the image you are constructing, such as light rain pattering on the ground if your image is related to a rainforest. In the 7 levels I have played so far, audio was mostly ok but some sounds were unusually louder than others and I had difficulty adjusting this volume with the sliders. However, most levels were completely fine and I experienced no issues.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3178848796

Controls are simple, click and drop, or right click to rotate. If you have dropped the piece in the right spot, it will stick there and will not be able to be moved again. I see some previous reviews discussing awkward, clunky controls, however it seems the controls have been updated since then and I had no issues. One minor recommendation is that when the levels are completed, that a little pop up with “level complete” and a little jingle sound plays. This is a feature I really love about the Hidden Cat franchise and always makes me smile.

Conclusion

This is a minimalistic little puzzle game with an easy 100% achievements for max completion. It features some beautiful nature imagery and simple gameplay that I found very relaxing. For such a bargain price of $AU3, the slight bugs are easy to forgive and barely impeded on my experience. I will definitely be returning to this game to complete the remaining levels and hope to see further themes added down the track.


Follow our curator page, IndieGems if you enjoyed this review and wish to see more like it

I love jigsaw puzzles and this is a 2 dimensional paper cut game. I've never come across this type of puzzle before, but I do recognise the art of paper cutting. This is a very simple style but it can be quite intricate and elaborate in real life by expert artists.
Do not expect another Glass Masquerade puzzle. This is completely different and much easier, but delightful in its own way. I wasn't sure if I would like this and at first I found it quite hard. But once I understood the mechanics, I grew to really love it.
Puzzle sizes range from 12 to 64 pieces and difficulty is from easy to medium. You need to complete a puzzle before moving onto the next one....there is no way to skip. This game only requires a mouse and left button selects a piece and the right button rotates it. So a good game for the less dexterous of us! Puzzles can be timed if you wish.
The highlight for me was the background sounds. Natural sounds can be very noisy, especially if it is a group of birds! My favourite sound is the rain which was very soothing!
A cozy short little game you can dip in and out of. Well priced. Many thanks to Elena for recommending this game! I heard on the grapevine that there will be more puzzles coming!! Yay! 8.5/10

paper-cut art gallery: nature is not unlike glass masquerade, except it's paper-based. not a lot of clones around despite gm's huge and well-deserved success and popularity, so this was a most welcome release. came out broken, of course, but at least the progression issue got fixed the following day (finishing the already solved level 11 didn't unlock the next one).

32 levels unlocked one by one. never a good idea, least of all in a game like this. only dragging works on level select, no clickable arrows for browsing. the unsolved one shows the number of pieces, solved ones also completion time (always the last, not the best) and the finished image. no on-screen timer, thankfully. the game doesn't indicate it anywhere but there's mid-level saving. in that case a completion percentage is shown on level select but only placed progress is saved, free pieces get jumbled every time a half-finished level is loaded.

controls are mouse-based with a few non-rebindable, undisclosed hotkeys. at least the store page is somewhat informative, pretty rare. left click picks up a piece, right click and 'r' rotates even on mouseover, esc toggles the ui. no key for the pause menu and no wheel-based rotation, which could be fine in certain cases, but a game like this needs to have it both ways and a single mouse button can't do clockwise and counter-clockwise at the same time. at first, left click had to be held all the time, unpleasant, but it got replaced with click to pick up, click to place. ideally, both would be possible.

no level complete screen, very underwhelming. there's a piano jingle that doesn't help if you turned off the audio and an achievement for every single level that's excessive and won't help on a replay. the ui disappears as soon as you start a level and comes back when it's done with a next level button that got patched in.

it looks really nice but that's always the easy part. layers and shadows make it hard to see what's placed and what isn't, pieces are uninspired and there are lots of tiny scraps to tediously fill barely noticable gaps with.

settings are sparse but available while playing. separate volumes, both for music based on the icons but there's no music, only ambience and ui sfx, the former with an incredibly annoying and loud bird sound repeating regularly. windowed mode got fixed, the window is now resizable and size and position get saved between sessions. no resolution options, nothing else.

I thought it would be decent but it has none of the elegance and charm of glass masquerade.. I guess I got what I paid for, except never ever has price represented quality or quantity 1:1, so just because it's only 2 bucks it could've still been good enough. you don't need much for something like this anyway, but what little this has does not work properly or at all. obviously impossible to recommend until it gets fixed up.