Tearaway

Tearaway is a game that never once tries to pretend it runs on anything other than what it actually runs on. Its entire world is made of paper, and the player doesn't enter it as an invisible camera but as a literally present character: there's a hole in the sky of this paper world, and your face, captured by the Vita's front camera, appears through it. The messenger Iota, or his counterpart Atoi, carries a message meant precisely for you, and the journey to deliver it winds through forests, mountains, and strange towns glued together from cardboard, corrugated paper, and colored construction paper.

Media Molecule built the gameplay on the idea that the player reaches into the world from the outside. Fingers push through the rear touch panel and appear in the level as giant fingertips, used to push aside an obstacle or launch an enemy into the air. Drums are set ringing with a tap, paper objects are cut out by tracing a finger along a drawn line, and your own drawings and photos then show up on characters and in the environment. The platforming portion is deliberately gentle and accessible, with the emphasis lying on exploration and on what the player themselves brings into the world. Creative tasks pile up gradually: the inhabitants ask for a crown, a squirrel-fur coat, or a butterfly, the player cuts it out of colored paper right on the touchscreen, and the creation then stays in the level, carrying the player's own handwriting.

Visually it's one of the most distinctive titles of its whole generation — everything has visible creases, folds, and paper fibers, shadows fall as if on a tabletop model, and music with folk instruments and hummed melodies holds it all together. At the time the game was received extremely well and was often cited as the best argument for buying a Vita, with its only real knock being its brevity. An expanded version later appeared for PlayStation 4, but it's the original that makes the most sense: without the Vita's touch panels, camera, and microphone, half its ideas couldn't exist at all. Today it feels like a small, personal gift rather than a technology demo, and that's rare.