REVIEW | Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM

LifeisXbox’s Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM review | How much do you know about Malaysian culture? To be completely honest, I knew absolutely nothing of it, but Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM taught me and will teach you, if you also don’t know anything about it, a few things, including words, phrases, and culture. Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM is the first instalment of an anthology horror series by Cellar Vault Games, which is already developing a sequel called Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open, and its publisher is Chorus Worldwide.

Most Memorable Moment

The few jumpscares present in Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM were the most memorable things about it. A jumpscare wouldn’t be a jumpscare if I spoiled what it contained or when it showed up, so you’ll have to see them for yourself.

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox One | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we Liked!

• Unique art style | You’ve likely seen games with hand-drawn, comic-book, and even origami-inspired visuals. Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM manages to differentiate itself even from every one of those, as everything is made out of paper, and there’s a good reason why that’s the case, not just because it looks interesting. This is because of the Ghost Festival, which is celebrated in Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, and Vietnam. Some other Asian countries also have similar festivities. A tradition of this Ghost Festival is to burn paper, shaped like many different objects, to please the ghosts, as well as joss paper, also known as incense paper.

• Short but sweet | You can finish Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM in about an hour, which isn’t a problem, even though it did feel more like an introduction than a complete story. This length also means there aren’t many jumpscares, but there were a few good ones, although this wasn’t one of the scariest games I’ve played. To get 100% you’ll need to play it multiple times to choose all possible decisions since this is a decision-based game, but it does have some interactivity to diversify things out. I played through the game 3 times, but I failed to get 100% and I don’t really know what I’ve missed. Also, as I’ve already said in the previous section, the game is based on the Ghost Festival, not only in its visual department but also in its story. It’s worth mentioning that you do play a bit with all three kids in the cover art.

• Subtle soundtrack | The soundtrack from Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM is a decent one. It’s not one of the best I’ve heard, and the ambient sounds and general sound effects are way more prominent than the songs are, but the songs do give the game a bit more life. The sound effects and ambient sounds are the stars of the show, they immerse you in their world and intensify emotions and events pretty nicely.

Mixed Feelings

• Nope | Nothing to see here, keep scrolling.

What we Disliked

• Minor problems | I experienced a few minor issues while playing Paper Ghost Stories: 7PM, but only one of them was a technical one. The technical problem I experienced was a specific section of the game dropping frames, and I believe this happened because of some smoke present there, as it’s the only section that had smoke in it. Another problem I found is that there isn’t an options menu, so you can’t even turn the volume up and down through the game itself. The last problem I’m mentioning is that even though the game shows footnotes explaining what some Malaysian expressions mean, I still found some of the dialogue a bit hard to understand, as it can have multiple expressions per dialogue bubble.

How long to beat the story | About an hour
How long to achieve 1000G | 2 – 2.5 hours

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