Flat Kingdom: Paper’s Cut Edition [Xbox]

9 May

Fat Panda Games’ Flat Kingdom Paper’s Cut Edition is a 2D puzzle-platformer where you play as Flat, who has been tasked to rescue the king’s daughter from the evil, masked thief known as Hex - and in doing so, retrieve the stolen jewels and save Flat Kingdom from being turned 3D! Flat has the ability to morph between three shapes; circle, square and triangle. You have different skills for different shapes; can double jump as a circle, run super fast as a triangle, and become stronger and weigh more as a square. Other skills for each shape will be learned over time, such as Flatbullet, which will allow you to gain access to new areas and collectibles within the levels by utilising Triangle’s speed before switching Square to bash through walls.

You’ll come across enemies that match the three shapes you can transform between, with the opposite shape being required in order to defeat an enemy. Circle beats Square, Square beats Triangle, Triangle beats Circle. There’s a sort of rock-paper-scissors aspect to it, which can help you to remember; my preference was to consider Square as a rock, Triangle for scissors and circle for paper. You’ll find that to progress, you will regularly need to switch between each of your forms, as well as take note of the forms that will be required in order to defeat bosses (signified by fairly obvious shape focused designs), as well as areas that require special skills you’ll need to have unlocked prior to returning, in order to reach.

Visually, the layered paper craft appearance is gorgeous, with bright colours and impressively detailed locations ranging from FlatForest to Flatlantis and more. The game has a cute pop-up book style intro, telling the story before you get right into things, and this works well with the overall paper-theme of the game. The 2.5D look of the bosses with their cut-out designs are great, with fantastic use of textures. The soundtrack, done by Manami Matsumae, is very joyful and cute, with tunes that are themed to match each area, such as the tropical tones in Flatlantis.

One thing that we both found to be quite strange was the battling, as switching to the correct shape and simply touching an enemy is enough to defeat them; no bouncing on heads or dash attacking here. Just being the opposite shape from them is their kryptonite. Having some sort of actual attack would have been good, as it would make things feel more substantial, whilst also adding a little bit of risk - since you’re essentially invincible to enemies of the opposing shape.

You’ve got access to a little journal that will be filled over time, with Diary entries, information about Enemies, and ‘Flat Notes’ which look over the Levels, Characters and Jewels. You’ll collect coins as you progress, which can be spent on additional hearts to keep you going, though the simple, straightforward gameplay renders this unnecessary for the most part - though the game does feel like it is aimed more at a younger age group, so this may be more useful in that case.

Overall, we found Flat Kingdom: Paper’s Cut Edition to be a fun time, and can be completed fully in a few hours. It has pretty simple mechanics, and the bosses - whilst more difficult than standard enemies - are pretty straightforward, just a bit lengthy to take down. If you’re interested in Flat Kingdom, you can pick it up for £7.99 on the Xbox Store.