Hirogami is one of the most visually striking games I’ve played this year. It’s also one of the most frustrating.
Coming from Bandai Namco Studios Singapore and Bandai Namco Studios Malaysia, Hirogami is a 3D platformer with plenty of combat mixed in. You play as origami hero Hiro as he protects his folded world from invasion by digital glitchers, black orbs that sometimes shoot lasers. Hiro platforms through levels in search of crane shrines to restore, which help fight back against the invading glitcher force and the prickly vines threatening the paper people.
The origami paper aesthetic permeating throughout the folded world is beautiful. Most everything in Hirogami looks made out of paper; origami characters, sharp-pointed paper trees, construction paper toadstools. The hub world, which Hiro returns to after each chapter, sprawls out from an open notebook.
The beauty continues throughout all of Hirogami. Hiro travels through green forests and purple swamp-like lands. The character designs are lovely too, with the other “human” characters and all the animals made of folded paper.
I enjoyed my first few hours playing the action platformer. Hiro starts without his transformations and has to fend off the invading glitchers with only his fan. Those early hours gradually introduce Hiro’s armadillo, frog, and ape transformations, each with their own variety of platforming. The armadillo can roll fast across platforms threatening to fall away, the frog can springboard off toadstools, and the ape can swing across vines.
Their abilities are also useful in combat. I found an early strategy of just rolling around as the armadillo, bouncing into enemy after enemy like they were bumper cars, was most effective. Jumping high and slamming down on a glitcher’s head (Do they have heads?) as the frog stunned enemies while also whittling their health down. This was especially useful in the late game as glitcher-ized origami animals presented a more challenging fight than the glitcher orbs, and Hiro’s health could deplete fast.
Once those strategies are found, you’re given little reason to deviate from them. There are some rock-paper-scissors elements to combat where you’ll need to switch up transformations to effectively take down enemies, but they’re not always necessary; your frog jump will work just as well on one glitcher as it does a glitcher-ized origami armadillo. One of the few times you need to use a specific ability is against a shielded glitcher as the frog’s spit ability can take down that shield. Or, you could just wait until the shield goes away on its own and crash into it with Hiro’s armadillo transformation.
I can’t help but feel like Hirogami would have been better served removing combat entirely and just focusing on platforming, though that isn’t without issues of its own. A fixed camera angle presents more trouble than it’s worth. In the best of platformers, players should know exactly where they’ll land and how far their momentum will take them. With Hirogami’s forced perspective, I couldn’t always accurately judge the distance between platforms, or even realize there was a gap between them if the camera didn’t show it.
When floating as a flat piece of paper, a fun way to traverse the world, I often had to rely on the paper’s shadow to gauge where Hiro would land as it wasn’t always immediately clear due to the camera. During some sections, the camera would shift to follow my rolling armadillo, though it would be a slow process and sometimes Hiro would be off-screen or roll right into danger without time to react.
I knew I was ready for my time with Hirogami to come to an end when I reached a late-game level. It required me to have 30 golden cranes to access it, the cranes being awarded by meeting various objectives during a level (like collecting a certain amount of currency or maintaining high health). I had 28, and groaned at the idea of going back and replaying levels to collect more as most objectives I missed would force me to play in ways I wouldn’t want to, like speedrunning a level to finish under six minutes or having to start a level over if Hiro took too much damage.
There are a lot of wonderful ideas folded into Hirogami, but there are too many creases in the way of greatness.
Hirogami will be released Sept. 3 on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a prerelease download code provided by Kakehashi Games. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
