Paper Dolls 2

Review of Paper Dolls: Original (includes a walkthrough).

Paper Dolls 2 is a sequel to Paper Dolls: Original. It is a horror game from a Chinese studio named Litchi Game. Paper Dolls 2 is very similar to Paper Dolls: Original and I would suggest to play that game before playing this one.

The game starts where the first game ended, on a second floor of an old abandoned Yin mansion. Yang Mingyuan mysteriously appeared in the mansion after a car crash where he tried to find his daughter and his search continues in this game too.

You will explore the mansion at crawling speed while collecting clues, journal entries, and dialogues from the past. You will also need to solve puzzles to advance, unlock locked or sealed door and interact with spirits. The game introduced combat system. At the beginning you will have to hide or run away from the spirits but when you acquire weapons you will be able to defend and attack. Each spirit has several lives and thus needs to be shoot several times. The spirits have weak points when they attack, so if you shoot them at that time you will just need to shoot them twice. Otherwise you'll need to shoot 4 times. There are jars of wine scattered around which you can use to your advantage as they will explode and take down a spirit/paper doll nearby. There are boss battles in which you will have to take down one spirit several times before you will be able to seal it away. These can become frustrating depending on your skill at defending or attacking at a precise moment. The good thing is that you now have one additional life, so you can take one hit. There is a way to cure yourself, which may be needed during boss battles.

The game also has autosave feature but it's not that great. It will autosave before a major event but only once during the playthrough. The game won't save after that event so if you die right afterwards you have to start all over again.

The puzzles were a disappointment for me in this game. It may be because I got used to the style from the previous game and did not find most of the puzzles intriguing or fun. There was just one puzzle that I enjoyed (mirror room one). I solved half of the puzzles by trial and error and half by just following instructions. Most of the puzzle clues seemed irrelevant to me (if the talisman is confusing to you, all you need to do is set it to characters that are written on the seal).

The game is longer because the play area is larger (two floors). I was afraid it would have negative impact on the game but I found it well balanced. You won't need to be running around like crazy searching for something since what you need is most of the time close to the location where you need it. Later on, it won't be that way, but you will also know where to go with the item you received. It won't take you that long to reach the place. I'd still recommend saving the game close to the location you are going to visit next and memorizing the plan of the floors.

As for graphics and sound. I found both good. They are better than in the Paper Dolls: Original. The environments are more detailed and even more atmospheric. The sound is better, primarily due to the fact that you won't be going through door that often and because the voice acting is done in Chinese. I wouldn't say it's great but it keeps you immersed in the game. Music is great once again.

Verdict: The game has nice feel, graphics and sound. I'd enjoy just walking around the mansion in VR. The larger map may be upside or a downside, but I found it well done. Combat is something that frustrated me through majority of the game. I spent 3 hours running around the mansion and 9 hours in combat. Spirits have different behaviors but once you get them you shouldn't have much problems with them. The puzzles were disappointment as I did not need to use my brain (mostly used it for fights in which I terrible died because I'm incapable of controlling the protagonist). I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone, but if you enjoyed the first game you will most probably enjoy this one too (I didn't but still finished it for the story - the Yin family story concludes in Paper Dolls 2).

Note: There are cutscenes in the game and they can be skipped by pressing Escape and E.

Thank you for reading
Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

Subject 264 walkthrough, puzzle solutions, achievement guide

I will eventually create a walkthrough video but since I will be recovering from surgery for quite a while I decided to write down something first. I'm not sure how extensively I should write this so I'll try to give general instructions rather than detailed explanation. You should scratch your own head and finish the game yourself but if you get seriously stuck you can use this guide (I did not find any other, if they exist they are well hidden).

There are 11-ish puzzles in total, the game saves after each part is finished. If you quit the game in the middle of a puzzle you will have to start that puzzle over as all items will respawn. I tried to name what you have to do according to the achievements. I'm not 100% sure that they are correct, but if you finish the game you will get all these plus 1 for ending and possibly 1 for the type of locomotion you did not use and 1 for launching the game (16 achievements in total).

Time is only a brain creation

The room you start the game features a big clock that hides the way out of the room. In order to get out you need to move the hands on the clock. The little and big hand can be moved by pressing buttons. One is located on the piano (hour) and the other one (minutes) is located on the photo/painting on the wall. The hour that needs to be set can be found in the journal on the table in the corner of the room - 3:30.

Set clock hands to 3:30

Arsonist

After you get out of the room, you will go down the stairs and appear in a room with four photos. There is a possibility to go to the left, so go there and enter the only room there. The only thing you need to do here is light the fireplace. In order to do that put some logs in the fireplace and light them with a candle. A ghost will then enter the room and drop a clue and a new image will show in the room.

Picasso

Go back to the room with the 4 photos. Here you have to switch off the lights of two photos that you haven't seen yet. One photo is from the first room (with a church) and the other one is in the room you just left with the fireplace (dolls?) Stairs going down will appear.

Friendship never dies

Go down the stairs and grab a crowbar. Break the glass with it. Behind the cabinet there is a vent. You can move the cabinet with your hand or just put your arm behind it. There is a rectangular piece so grab it and put it in the thing that was behind the glass you broke. You will get a key. Bring the key to the two drawers at the bottom of the cabinet. In the upper drawer you will find a screwdriver that you can use on the screws blocking your way through the vent.

Collect some of the handles (weird looking things you probably wondered what they are for) and enter the vent.

You will find yourself inside a morgue where you need to open certain door and keep certain door closed. Apply the clue from the ghost.

1 0 X 1 1 0
1 0 0 1 1 0

Open the door where there is 1 and keep closed the ones that are marked with 0. In order to open the doors you will need handles that are scattered across the rooms. Two are in the morgue, one is in the first room, two are in the second room I believe. When you have that done according the clue, open the door marked with X. Pull the body out - after a little jumpscare you'll end up in a different morgue.

Where am I?

All you have to do in this morgue is to grab the head and toss it where the body was previously stored. Just find the door with the David Baehr name on it. After you do this you will here a ding and the elevator will go down and open. You will be able to choose one of two levels. It doesn't matter in which one you go since they are connected by stairs (or the elevator).

Plumber

First you need to go to the bathroom (somewhere on the left). You need to let the water flow from certain taps. If you look at the showers you will see that one is working and one does not. So turn the taps that share the side with the working shower. It should be the first sink and the furthest one. The sinks will then give you a combination that you need to apply on the toilet flushers.

left, right, left, middle, middle

When you enter the combination correctly you will hear a sound of door opening upstairs.

Student 1

Enter the door that opened. You will enter a school. The first door on the right will lead you to a classroom where there is a drawing of man on fire. On the blackboard you will have to draw something. You will find out what that is if you find three pieces of a drawing.

The first one is in this room on a desk. The second one is in the classroom locked in a piece of furniture. The key is in the central room. In the furthermost door there is a child's toy on which you need to put the corresponding shapes to get the last piece of the drawing. Two pieces for the toy are in the same room, but the rest you have to find as well (two are in the lockers, one is in the center room, and the last one is in the classroom in a desk, furthest away from the blackboard).

Draw the man on the blackboard and a word 'WHY' will appear, then you will teleport into a mansion.

Pregnant

The mansion puzzle takes a bit longer than the other puzzles. You will need to find 6 white papers. The first one shows 4 different symbols. The other 5 show 3 rows of 2 symbols. What you have to do is find the corresponding symbol from the starting paper on another paper (it will be on the left). Then look for the right symbol. If you find it again on the left, see if you can find the right symbol elsewhere. When you can't find the right symbol anywhere, that's the symbol you need. In the middle of the mansion there are four marked slots where you can put something which correspond to the 4 symbols you are looking for. They resemble letters H E L L.

In order to get all symbols and white papers you will need to open one closed door. In order to open it you have knock 13 times.

After entering the word 'Hell' the environment will turn into rather hellish one or nightmare one. If you will go back to the three door upstairs you will find out that one is closed and doesn't have a handle. You need to get the handle to open it. There you will find a piece of metal that you will use as a lever in the furthermost room. In that room you need to move the furniture in a way so you can reach the thing where to put the lever and then pull it down. It will open another door somewhere at the clinic or the other accessible floor.

Student 2

You will enter another school. In one of the rooms there is a rug on the floor that shows numbers, shapes and letters. That is what you will use to figure out the hang man puzzle. The hangman puzzle is again in the class on a blackboard. There are shapes above the blackboard. You will have to find those shapes and their corresponding number. There are 4 clues around the school that will tell you that background is something that will allow you to find a number and thus letter and that sun is a star. There are four shapes - a star that you can find on the walls and has two numbers 1, 1 and 5. Square that is also on a wall and has number 6. Wooden triangle toy is (in a desk in classroom?) 7 and rectangle is 4. What you have to do is look at the rug and check the background color of the shape.

Then count boxes colored this way, you should always lend on a letter. So Star shape will get you R and M, rectangle will get you U, triangle D, square E. Out of these letters you need to find the correct word, the order is above the blackboard, you'll just have to figure out where 1 or 5 is. The correct answer is REDRUM.

You have to write that on the blackboard using the shapes that you can see on the opposite wall.

Killer

After a fire you will appear in a new and very creepy location with fetuses in jars scattered around. All you have to do is find the four correct ones and place them where they should be (just check the name tags).

Insane

In the last part of the game you will have to find a hammer and get a crowbar behind wooden bars that you can't miss. You will need the crowbar to enter a barricaded door further inside. In the room there is a chair and gasoline around it. This is the place where you will have to lurk a monster that walks around. Before you do this you gotta find a candle (it's to the right if you enter from the entrance). If you make a way towards the room with the chair from the right you will also find a light that you can use to light your candle if by a chance it goes off. The monster walks slowly and will not pursue if you run too fast, so walk slowly. Then enter the room and walk past the gasoline. When the mosnter goes over it throw the candle there and make the monster die in fire.

Killed or Pacifist

When this happens you will find yourself elsewhere watching a man die in fire on a bed. If you walk out of the room a policeman will come at you with a gun telling you to put down hands on the ground or be shoot. Depending on whether you surrender or not you will get Killed or Pacifist achievement

The remaining achievements are Welcome which you get when you launch the game, TP Master if you use teleport locomotion throughout the whole game and Free Man if you used the free locomotion.

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)

Subject 264

Since the game is quite difficult and there doesn't seem to be a guide, I decided to write a quick one - Puzzle Solutions

Subject 264 is a VR horror puzzle game developed by Virtual Guys. I never heard of either but the game was a very nice surprise and I'm thankful I came across it.

You wake up in a room with no memories of your past and all you can hear are creepy sounds. The surroundings are also very creepy. You look around and you don't see a way out. It is up to you now to figure out how to get out of the very first room with 'Subject 264' written in blood on the wall. You will explore your surroundings and interact with different kind of items and you will have to solve your first puzzle. When you do, you will be able to go outside this room and reach another room where you'll have to figure out what to do next. While trying to escape you'll be uncovering your own past and start wondering if what is going on is real or some kind of an experiment or something just in your head.

The game is very atmospheric and I fully immersed in it which also made me tip toe around the rooms and corridors and my immersion was broken only after I ran headfirst into a real life cabinet or table. The feeling of something being totally wrong will stay with you throughout the game making occasional jump scares even more scary.

The puzzles are not particularly easy. While there is logic in them it may not seem like it at first. I went through the first part by trial and error. If you get stuck on a puzzle and you are in the correct room you will hear (your) voice giving you a hint. They are mostly helpful (there was one hint I totally didn't get).

Graphically the game is nicely done, offers different environments to enjoy. There are relatively well preserved rooms like the one you start the game in, ones that are less preserved (the following one) and then ones that are very creepy and scary. Some areas are very dark but you don't need to venture there unless there is a flashlight nearby. In that case there might be some key items in the dark.

Sound is good, there is some tense music and background noise and voices. The voice acting is not bad and it is easy to understand. The sound effects do not break immersion and actually make it better.

The not so good about the game is the fact it was designed for Vive and therefore the controls for Rift are not ideal. It does not seem to like Knuckles either. The game requires 360 degrees tracking and tracking at the floor level since you will be forced to pick up items from the floor and you need to actually grab the objects (can't grab them from distance). There are two types of locomotion - normal joystick one and teleportation - but both are rather slow.

Verdict:
Subject 264 is very atmospheric psychological horror puzzle game that will immerse you in the story and dark past of subject 264. The puzzles are unique, well designed, and not very easy to figure out which makes the game relatively long (5 hours). Graphics and sound are also very well done. There is lot of detail and variety in environments and many objects one can play with which makes the game great for exploration. I'd highly recommend the game to anyone who likes more complex puzzle or escape rooms. Since the game is rather serious, dark and very grave I wouldn't recommend it to people who are struggling with deep depression or unhandled traumas.

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)