From its unique artistic design to its simplistic mechanics, Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open is an indie horror game unlike anything I have ever played. It is a story-driven narrative adventure about a young girl named Ting as she navigates her life in a small Malaysian suburb. Ting’s journey begins when her family moves to a new neighborhood where she sees another little girl looking lost and confused. After a short conversation, Ting and the strange girl, Xiu, begin a rather unusual friendship. You see, Xiu is a ghost, and it seems only Ting is able to see her.
As the story progresses, we follow Ting through her daily challenges while growing up in a Malaysian family. Her relationships with her doting mother and strict father are at the forefront of the narrative as Ting struggles to make “real” friends, enter school, and make sense of the supernatural forces that surround her daily. Ting’s family believes that Xiu is an imaginary friend that she will eventually grow out of. The other children bully Ting for being strange, and it seems that in the Malaysian culture... Ting is an embarrassment for her father.
Though she is always striving to do the right thing, Ting’s “gift” causes her to get herself and unfortunate companions into many a perilous situation. Her sternly authoritarian father treats her harshly and seems always angry with her for being disobedient. Her mother’s increasing forgetfulness and ailing health causes further turmoil in the family. Her friends grapple with their belief in Ting’s ability to see ghosts while her peers simply think she is the creepy girl who talks to the air.
What starts out as a cute story about a little girl who can see and talk to lost souls turns into an emotional coming-of-age tale with two vastly different endings you can choose. The supernatural aspects of the story that start off as lighthearted fun slowly shift to ominous elements that are outright frightening. To be honest, when I tried to stream the game on Twitch, the first few chapters were a bit of a slog to get through, and I ended up finishing the game on my own time. Fortunately, by the end of the game, I regretted that I did not stick it out until the absolutely incredible climax and conclusion of the game with my community. Upon reaching the end of the game, Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open was like a book that I could not put down.
The game’s narrative is masterfully conceived through, not only richly interesting content and delivery, but also a genuinely unique art style. As the name, itself, implies, Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open uses simple hand-drawn paper models and backgrounds to roll out the story. The game also incorporates text footnotes that explain the Malay dialogue and meanings, which I found fascinating. The immersive quality of the gameplay is reinforced through interesting mini-games for everything from mundane chores to playing childhood games. There are even a few moments of tense stealth mechanics and QuickTime events to break up the potential monotony of a text-driven storyline. Visual effects and sound design work well together with the aesthetics of the game to cement the player into Ting’s world. The deeper into the lore you get, the more effective the encompassing storytelling gets.
While Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open may not be everyone’s cup of tea it is quite an enjoyable adventure and a pleasant change of pace in a sea of copy-and-paste indie horror games featuring overused 3-D assets and boring mechanics. Take it from someone who plays literally hundreds of these games and demos that I fished out of that boundless sea. It was quite refreshing to play an indie horror game where I didn’t need to find a fuse or a crowbar... though I did need a hammer.
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