System: HTC Vive Only
Price at Time Of Review: Free
Comfort Rating: Green (No Movement)
Genre: Party / Mini Games
Input: Tracked Motion Controllers
Best Playing Position: Room-Scale
Multi-Player: Yes (Co-op Only – No Single Player)
Age Rating: PG
Description: 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.
Review: ‘Local Paper Small Town’ is a very clever co-op game in which one person plays in VR and one (or more) reads the newspaper from the same “small town” in the real world. Movement is done via teleport with no other options and no turning, so you will need to play standing, or in a swivel chair. It is also worth noting that I used an Oculus Rift to play the game without issues. When it comes to the newspaper you need to read you can download this as a printable item to make it more fun, or you can simply view it as a PDF (but it is far more fun and easier to download and print out). With its cardboard cutout people and cartoon town, the game looks amazing and is full of lovely little things to find if you look in the right places. It’s mostly about solving word puzzles and putting people in the right place, but there is a nice storyline to follow along with so you never really feel lost. But as it says at the start of the game communication is key.
It is worth noting that you will only play through once, but play with the right people/person and you will have a great laugh here. It reminds me a lot of ‘Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes‘, only at a much slower, more relaxed pace. It looks good, has a great storyline and is great fun to play and as an extra bonus it is 100% free! But personally, I would have paid money to play this.
