Hirogami Demo impressions: A pretty and promising paper-based platformer

Hirogami is a bit of an interesting game, with an interesting team behind it: The Singapore and Malaysia branches of Bandai Namco Studios. They’re the regional game development offices of the Japanese entertainment giant Bandai Namco, and they typically support the parent studio on double and triple-A games, including Ace Combat, Soul Calibur and Tekken. Which makes Hirogami something of an oddity in their portfolio; despite the Bandai Namco name attached, the game has less than seven permanent team members working on it, with ad hoc assistance rendered by supporting Bandai Namco developers (according to a Gamerant interview). It’s also published by Kakehashi Games, whose catalogue consists mostly of indie titles.

Indeed, Hirogami has the trappings of an indie game, too, with a high-concept premise that takes a familiar genre and adds one simple but interesting twist: It’s a 3D platformer, except everything is made of origami paper.

Everything natural, that is. This world of folded paper has come into conflict with the Blight, a form of corruption that not-so-subtly takes a digital form, including a glitchy appearance and synthesised laser sound effects. This is the main conflict that the game has you tackle, as you take control of Hiro, a master of the art of folding, to save the land. The demo for Hirogami just released earlier this month, and while it is admittedly short, containing only the first level and 10-15 minutes of playtime, I took a look at it to see what happens when a studio that typically works on bigger games takes on something a little more serene.

Out of the gate, Hirogami is pretty deliberate in incorporating aspects of paper into its gameplay, specifically how, with origami, a sheet of paper is a blank slate that can be transformed. One of the game’s main mechanics is Hiro’s ability to transform into different origami animals: A frog, an ape and an armadillo (though only the last one is available in this demo). Each form has its own special abilities, with the armadillo being able to attack enemies and break objects by rolling.

Thematically, it works in emphasising the relationship between paper and the natural world that the game is showcasing. Gameplay-wise, it’s an interesting mechanic, but it’ll need clever level design to keep interesting, or it risks becoming stale. In this case, it’s still too early to tell, especially as we haven’t gotten a good feel for what the other forms can do, but I’m curious to see what ways the developers can spin the gimmicks for the other animal forms. From the State of Play trailer, the Donkey Kong Country-style vine hopping stage is a bit of an eye-catcher.

Other qualities of paper that the game makes use of are its thinness and light weight. Hiro can transform into a sheet of paper, in which you can glide or ride wind tunnels on to higher platforms. It should be mentioned here that Hirogami also makes wind an aspect of the gameplay, as Hiro’s main attack in his human form consists of blowing enemies away with a Sacred Fan.

It’s also teased in the trailer that this sheet form will be useful for getting into narrow spots. And while we’re talking about the trailer, it’s kind of a shame that we don’t get to try out Hiro’s last form, a paper plane, because those short looks at the paper plane stages kind of remind me of Star Fox.

But above the potential for how Hiro’s different forms will be utilised, we’ll need to see how far the game encourages us to use those forms in a synergistic way. It’s one thing to stay in a single form for an extended period of time, but what might make the game really engaging is if the level prompts us to quickly swap out one form for another in a given situation. We don’t get that much in this demo, given that it’s the first level and it’s just introducing us to the base mechanics. But the trailers do show promise in this regard, like rolling down a tunnel as the armadillo before unfolding into a sheet to fit through a narrow gap.

A word on the game design at large; Hirogami’s art direction is solid. Not everything is overtly made out of paper; the more obvious things are plant life and living beings, but for certain materials like stone and wood, the way they’re constructed out of paper is more subtly conveyed:

It’s somewhat unnoticeable unless you take a second to look, but the game’s slower pace means that you can subconsciously recognise the folds on these objects in the environment, even if they look less paper-y at first glance. There’s a bunch more of these little details strewn around the game, too, from certain objects having creases to the stop motion-esque way the grass moves. More on the nose, paper sound effects also litter the game’s various UI interactions, though in this demo the game’s audio as a whole seems to be struggling at times.

Overall, it’s a bit hard to judge what Hirogami will ultimately become just based off of the first 10 or so minutes of gameplay. We’ve seen how the physical traits of paper influences the game’s mechanics, but it’s also not the only game to incorporate paper and origami into its aesthetics (Paper Mario: The Origami King comes to mind). This isn’t to play the originality game, but I make this point because Hirogami seems to use paper as a metaphor for the organic, contrasted with the digital, as represented by the Blight. This is a pretty compelling dichotomy, and I think it’s admirable that the developers seem keen on exploring the very relationship between paper and human creativity and culture. I’m interested to see how they’ll tackle this conflict across the game, especially in regards to how the Blight will change as the game progresses and what exactly it is in Hirogami’s world.

The Hirogami demo is out now on Steam, and the game will release on 3 September 2025 for PC and PS5.