Fans of Mario’s papercraft comedy RPG adventures, rejoice! Today Nintendo announced a brand new Paper Mario coming to Nintendo Switch, and it’s not far away: Paper Mario: The Origami King is coming out on July 17 this year.
I usually try to avoid copy-pasting directly from a press release, but I have to make an exception this time. Someone clearly had a lot of fun writing up the premise for the new game:
It seems as if King Olly – who claims to be the ruler of the Origami Kingdom – has hatched a devious plot in unleashing his plan to fold the entire world. It looks pretty dangerous on paper, so someone who’s a cut above the rest is needed to save the day! In Paper Mario: The Origami King Mario faces one of his most thrilling challenges yet. Just when matters couldn’t get worse, King Olly has bound Princess Peach’s Castle in giant, coloured streamers and transported it to a distant mountain. He’s even transformed Bowser’s minions into Folded Soldiers and enlisted them in his treacherous cause.
As you might gather from the title, Paper Mario: The Origami King puts a folded-paper twist on Mario’s world. While Paper Mario and his allies retain their classic paper cutout look, the enemies and other characters that the crew encounter have all taken an origami form. In the game’s reveal trailer, you can even see a Shy Guy unfolding itself, and then re-folding into a completely different character.
Paper Mario didn’t completely avoid the origami transformation, however. With a new ability called 1000-Fold Arms, he can stretch his arms out concertina-style to solve puzzles, peel away loose bits of paper to reveal secrets, and interact with things in the landscape that would otherwise be out of reach.
Paper Mario: The Origami King introduces a ring-based battle system, which adds a layer of puzzle solving to the game’s turn-based encounters. Each fight begins with enemies scattered around the party in a series of rings, and players then need to find ways to line them up in order to maximise the damage they’re dishing out.
Preorders for already open for this new Paper Mario on the Nintendo Switch eShop, with a price of AU$79.95 / NZ$89.95. Preloading the game is also available from today, ahead of its July 17 release.
