Local Paper Small Town

Local Paper Small Town is a 2-player co-op puzzle game about spreading happiness around a quirky papercraft town.

Team up with a friend, using a physical newspaper and VR, to discover Smalltown and its charming cast of characters by communicating and relating between both formats.

One player explores the town in VR, solving puzzles by moving cardboard cutout characters around, entering codes, and working with the second player to fill in their newspaper crossword puzzle and deducing each character's story and place in the game world. The second player, equipped with the PDF of the Smalltown newspaper, reads and scans pages for clues that may help both players advance the game state by solving puzzles in VR thanks to their shared understanding of the characters, similar to a collaborative escape room, but with more narrative flavouring.

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How to play:

In this two-player experience, one player is equipped with a newspaper from a fictional Canadian town, and the other player explores a papercraft version of this town in virtual reality. Please find the newspaper PDF in the game folder.

This game is for two players: one with the newspaper, one playing VR.

The game lasts about one hour, and is best played in local co-op with a speaker for both players to hear the audio.

Be sure to communicate well with your partner to solve puzzles, discover character stories, and complete the game.

VR player: In addition to teleporting, you can grab characters and move them around to solve puzzles.

Newspaper player: The game was designed to be played with the newspaper player not seeing the game screen. However, if you prefer to have an easier time, you could check what the other player is seeing in VR.

Have fun in Smalltown!

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Created as a mixed media semester project at the Cologne Game Lab. Nominated for the Ubisoft Newcomer Award at the German Developer Awards 2020.