Print isn't dead, insists origami platformer Hirogami, in which you fight a digital Blight

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What exact percentage of unacknowledged irony is it when a digital game wants to sing the praises of paper-based art in the context of a story about fighting off a "blight" of digital creatures? If you were serious about that moral, Hirogami, you'd actually be printed on hammered-down treemulch. I decry thee, pretender! You're one of the very electronic critters you want me to battle. On the other hand, you do let me transform into an origami armadillo which can roll around like a pinball. Here's the announcement trailer.

"Hirogami is a 3D action platformer inspired by the ancient Japanese art of origami (paper folding)," explains the Steam page. "Everything you encounter has been crafted to convey the physical, often fragile, natural world of paper, amidst a story interwoven with threads of wistful intrigue."

You play Hiro, a valiant sheet of paper with the ability to transform into a lanky jumpman, a ground-pounding frog, a block-pulling ape and more besides. Your job is to "cleanse the mind-warped inhabitants" of a world whose "delicate natural balance" has been swayed by the aforesaid blight.

"Explore every nook and cranny and discover all the world's hidden secrets," the Steam blurb continues. "Unfold into a sheet of paper to ride fiery updrafts, or to slide under deadly traps. Or become a paper plane to traverse dangerous chasms. This origami world is a fragile place, and you'll need your wits about you to protect it. Wield Hiro's paper fan to blow away the Blight, or pound, pummel, or poison them using your litany of papery powers."

Ah, if only we harried journalists had been granted access to such "papery powers" back when broadband became ubiquitous, and everybody started shrieking that "print is dead". Give it a couple of hundred years, and people will be making wistfully intriguing platformers about the ancient and forgotten artform of the video game magazine.

Imagine it: playing as Masthead, a soggy compound of Adobe InDesign drafts, you must defeat the encroaching forces of the internet by transforming into an Official Xbox Magazine (the combat option, because we always put a gun on the cover) or an Official Nintendo Magazine (for platforming, of course) or an Edge (for debuffing enemies, because after all every other publication's 10/10 is an Edge 6/10 etc etc). Except that there will be no internet forces to fight, because it turns out when they said that "print is dead" they neglected to add "and internet business models are built on quicksand".

A couple of closing Hirogami insights - it's got a traditional instrumental soundtrack and is being made by Bandai Namco's Singapore team, with Kakehashi Games publishing. The "game made of paper" conceit is old hat at this stage, but the art direction is rather lush, all the same. I think they've missed a trick by not having a minigame that simulates the sequence of folds for each incarnation of Hiro, though - if you want to cherish those traditions, why put them on speed dial? It's out in 2025.