HomeNewsPaper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open
This papercraft ghost story game is beautiful to just walk around inThird Eye Open is a Malaysian coming-of-age story with a twist
Third Eye Open is a Malaysian coming-of-age story with a twist
Image credit:Chorus Worldwide Games
Image credit:Chorus Worldwide Games
A story about a girl who has a ghost best friend nobody else can see, and has to juggle that relationship with her interactions with living people?Sounds fake. Haha, but seriously folks. There’s a demo forPaper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Openin theSteam Next Fest, and boy howdy did I like just looking at this game in motion. The clue is in the name, as all the characters look like 2D paper cut out dolls, and all the environments are like papercraft models. It’s pretty gorge.
It’s very relatable in its coming-of-age-ness, as Ting has to deal with Xiu being jealous of her living friends (not for being alive, but for having fun with Ting that she just can’t join in with). It’s also difficult to explain her situation and particular struggles to her parents, who, naturally enough, may be kind, but have trouble taking the whole ghost situation literally. Several of Ting’s peers just outright bully her about it, as you might expect.
At the same time, Third Eye Open doesn’t shy away from being culturally specific, with a lot of Malaysian culture and tradition on display. The game also uses Malaysian dialect “that loosely incorporates Cantonese, Madarin, and Bahasa Melayu slang words, as well as grammatical errors that have become commonplace”, and in practise has footnotes to explain specific terms the first time you encounter them, as do references to, for example, Malaysia-specific companies. This is very cool! Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open is out this year, with afree demo on Steamnow.
P.S. Sorry to the developers Cellar Vault Games because I uploaded the header image and on sort of autopilot I saved it as “Third Eye Blind”. It may happen again.
